Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

The quiet clinic isn't so quiet anymore. The arrival of the publicity-seeking Her Highness has nettled (or perhaps emboldened) Praying Mantis to become more pushy. Today, to my concern, he started pulling out a camera and taking photos into the parking lot.

At one point he was aiming at the 7-11 wrapper for god knows what, possibly because one of the clinic nurses kicked it on the ground and Her Highness is already spreading the lie that the clinic improperly disposes of medical waste. So I asked him, as he took the photo, if he thought it was medical waste.

"Yes."

So I marched over, grabbed the wrapper, spread it out and said "Here it is. This is what you wanted a photo of. You can have it, our compliments."

And he starts going "It's a 7-11 wrapper. I don't understand. Why all this hostility?" But he wasn't moving the camera - and I was holding the wrapper right near the lens - so I didn't move. Then he decided to meditate, but unfortunately closing his eyes didn't make me go away. (What am I, the monster under his bed?) Eventually he marched back to where he started, me following the entire time, holding out the wrapper until he put the camera down.

Then I noticed the other protester filming me on her phone. So I held the wrapper out to her in a way that should have covered the lens. "I'm not filming," she protested, but she didn't put her phone down so I said "That's okay. I've stood out here for 3 hours. I can stand here all day."

And for the next 10 minutes or so, that's exactly what happened. A Mexican standoff where she didn't move and I barely did (occasionally I adjusted my grip) until one of their signs fell over. She went to move it -- visibly turning off her video camera (what? I'm not supposed to know what that looks like? I take video on my iPhone too.)

And that was the end of that... for today. Praying Mantis and a camera are bad news and I'm already speculatively eyeing my closet for a very large, opaque fashion scarf I can put in my pocket and whip out next time he pulls the camera out. Worst case scenario, I myself am very large and opaque.

Apparently this amused the heck out of one of the other escorts, who ended up filming me being filmed and holding up the wrapper.

I realize that the title could equally apply to the election, but apparently there's a new clinic protester in town who's really... special. But nobody's actually told me what to expect on Saturday.

I suppose y'all can expect a more interesting than usual liveblog.

I thought it was going to be a quiet day. Then one of the protestors started shouting angrily about "How long are you going to stand there (something something) dead babies?" And THEN the two women started singing Christmas carols. Seriously, Christmas carols. O Come Emmanuel and Silent Night.

Faaaaaaabous. We've got a new Eeyore. Apparently shout guy started quiet, now he's telling patients they're genocidal baby killers and insulting the escorts. I shall call him Mr Shouty. I need a set of new names; only Praying Mantis is left of the original lot.

We've been thanked in person. That's always nice.

Clinic escorting. Best when quiet catered. Relief shift brought peanut butter chocolate cookies.

About 6 weeks into yoga, she said "Forward fold" and I folded and thought "Huh. I can touch my toes. That hasn't happened in years." When I started escorting, I really had to resist fighting back with the protesters. But when Mr. Shouty angrily called me an inhuman machine, I reaized I wasn't even *fresh* out of fucks. My fucks had withered, died, and blown away long ago.

I'm about to start a clinic shift. It's also about to start pouring up to 4 inches of snow, sleet and rain on us. This is a placeholder so I can update this from the phone, if anything interesting happens.

As it's the first weekend of 40 Days of Lent Life, I'm expecting shennanigans.

9:05: note to self: when getting gloves, it is important NOT that they look alike, but they be an actual pair!

9:20: fellow escort is fellow Austen *and* Holmes fan. We're boring the hell out of the only guy with squee.

10:35: debating taking off vest, coat, and boots to add toe warmers or just sit in car until can feel toes again. There turn out to be limits to the insulted boots and hiking socks, and we have another ~2 hours to go.

10:40: snow has started. Looking at it through windshield.

11:10: home again, home again. All the patients are in and many have left. The last one thanked us for being there when she got there. Snowing harder. Think we may have left too early but not arguing.

I am about to have my first experience with someone dubbed Father Nosferatu by my team lead. He's tall, bald, skinny, dressed in black robe, and just set up a table with plastic cut-away uterii showing the stages of fetal development. I'm told that he has a good singing voice and is aggressive, but right now he's just leading a quiet set of Hail Marys.

Oh, he does have a good singing voice! As that flat "for the sake of his sorrowful passion" from 2 Roe v Wade days ago still is stuck in my head, I appreciate his talent.

I'm told that he's not as aggressive as Eeyore, but just as vocal. I wonder if I'll be called a demon like she did. Or have holy water thrown on me like musecleo. I won't feel like a real escort until I get rebaptised by someone who hates me.

ETA: So far, the loudest has been a pregnant woman in jogging pants, a pink t-shirt, and a blue ball cap with a rosary wrapped around her wrist. I shall call her Soccer Mom.

ETA II: Ye gods, the plastic fetii are removable!

ETA III: One of the protesters got really upset and left when Father Nosferatu explained that the souls of unbaptised babies go to Limbo, not heaven.

ETA IV: Scrum at the business next door. Employee told protesters to get out of their adjoining lot. Father Corleone, employee, and owner of clinic mixed it up on if they had permission to witness across dividing line. Protesters angrily decamp. "Pro murder" said repeatedly, "place of death" once. Person who said latter bursts into tears and consoled by Soccer Mom.

ETA V: We have a new Eeyore! Well, considering her ethnicity, Eeyore Nuevo. No talk of demons yet, but she chased a client car to the stop light, knocked on the window (which was not opened) and stayed preaching at it, hand on window, until the light turned green.

ETA VI: Any snappy replies to "I love you? "I don't care" got "You're my sister!" It's doubly creepy because the sweet voice and wide Stepford smile came from the woman who was in tears not long ago.

VII: a woman just pulled into the lot to tell the protestors & us about a yard sale. O.o

SCOTUS is debating the Massachusetts law regarding buffer zones around abortion clinics, with a side order of "are these zones even necessary?"

The anti-abortion side says no. Quotes from antis include "free speech," "my rights," "comfort women going in." In all the newspaper quotes, I have yet to see any anti mention the rights of the actual women actually going in, much less if they feel "comforted" as opposed to "harassed."

The pro-abortion side tells stories of harassment, intimidation, spitting, even impersonating officers of the law in order to obtain patients' personal information.


Me, I'm going to tell two stories.

CLINIC #1. The "quiet" clinic, where I do most of my escorting. It's a private facility, so the attached parking lot is also private property. However, protesters can (and do) line up on the sidewalk, and prowl up and down the parking lot of the business next door in order to patrol the outer edge of the clinic parking lot. One of the first instructions I received when I started escorting there was to park very close to the sidewalk so that patients would be forced to park deeper in, further from the protestors.

Also, so that we could rush to shelter behind the car if the guy who tried to bomb the clinic showed up again now that he was out of jail. Yeah, first thing on the job, I was being shown a perp shot. And he *has* shown up again.

In theory, protesters are not allowed in the parking lot; they have to lure people down by calling to them. I say "in theory" because Eeyore became noted for rushing into the lot in her zeal to shove pamphlets at people. I've told the story before of how the cops got called and the conflicting stories of what happened when Eeyore ended on her ass in the parking lot and then escorted back to the sidewalk. Father Corleone, a massive man the size of a quarterback, did eventually learn that shouting "COME HERE! COME HERE SO I CAN TALK TO YOU!" wasn't getting him the response he wanted and toned that down too.

The most I usually say is "we have protestors. They make noise, but they stay on the sidewalk." After all, Eeyore's been gone for over a year now.

On the whole what happens is a lot of shouting to the patients as they walk through the parking lot, with a side order of shoving pamphlets at them as they try to make the turn out of the parking lot and a sprinkling of Praying Mantis (aka Kneeling Boy; I'm adopting another escort's nickname for him) edging up and offering rosaries. I once distracted him long enough to let somone out of a car by complimenting the free rosary du jour. (It was pretty, all pink and white plastic.)

We mostly stand by the door, a good 3-6 feet away. I've been given the DVD Blood Money and I could probably get a rosary if I asked Praying Mantis nicely, but there is generally little contact. We talk to each other; they pray.



CLINIC #2. Downtown, where the antis successfully sued to have the walkway from the sidewalk through the gated yard up to the door declared "public space" so that they could line both sides of the yard. In theory, the buffer zone is 6 inches from the door. In reality, it does not exist.

The only time I was there was on Roe v Wade day, when things are extra-special crazy with a large helping of insanity sauce. People lined the block, literally lined it shoulder to shoulder on the curb to the street, people who had been bussed in (!) and were taking shifts (!!) because at one point the busses pulled out and everyone on the sidewalk filed in and fresh protesters came out. There were people on the other side of the side walk too; a couple of escorts were slowly patrolling up the center to make sure that a walkway was clear. I could hear the footsteps of the anti right behind me; every escort who did it was shadowed by a protestor making sure that their public right to be on public land was also being upheld.

It went double for escorts actually escorting through this gauntlet. We tried to have an escort on each side of a women; as the antis certainly had enough bodies to have a minimum of 2 per woman on each side, talking to her the entire way. Escorts also try to talk to them, to try to drown out the antis. There's a guy who was banned from protesting this clinic. The antis say we escorts hated his zeal. We escorts point out that he was following a woman so closely that when he stepped down, he actually pulled off her shoe.

As patients turned in at the gate, someone with a huge anti-abortion poster would jump out into the gate for a moment, shaking it at them. This would last about 2-4 seconds, and then he'd step back... just enough time to legally claim that he was not, in fact, impeding access.

Both sides of the gated yard are choked with people, mostly praying. Mostly standing, because there wasn't much room to kneel. Another few shouts, maybe another poster waved over the pathway just as the door is opened, and she's finally in.

At clinic 1, we open the door as a courtesy. At clinic 2, we open the door to make sure that the door is kept clear and unblocked.

Although it hasn't happened to me, I've heard of both spit and holy water ending up on escorts at clinic 2. Certainly my clothes were plucked at when people got too close, although we are trying hard to avoid each other - touching is, after all, legally assault and battery, and everyone is watching everyone else like a hawk.


This is the difference between a buffer zone and not. And bear in mind, this is happening to EVERY woman who enters, despite the fact that both clinics offer full-service women's health issues - not just abortions, but well woman visits, pregnancy monitoring, post-partum followups, etc. Yes, this means that a woman who has *given birth* and is coming in for her checkup after is going to hear "mommy, mommy, don't kill me."

Heck, at Clinic 2, it applied to every single woman who walked on that side of the street, even if she was just trying to get down the block or to the businesses on either side!


Side note: buffer zones as a concept are legal. There are buffer zones around polls, there is even a buffer zone around the Supreme Court itself (something the news is making much of, and something SCOTUS is irritatedly saying "it's different when it's us.")

So here I am in the clinic lot with my vest on for the first time in months... and there are no protesters. None. Nada. Zip. The sidewalk is empty.

And accomplished I have been! Last night I returned to the scion society The Red Circle of DC for the first time in what is likely 20 (25?) years. Jeremy Brett was Holmes at the time.

Today I:
Cleaned up after the big bowl broken by the kittens. Since I had to sweep and mop the hall anyway, I might as well go on to steam mop it... and sweep & steam mop the kitchen... and scrub the kitchen counters... and scrub the bathroom counter & toilet... and sweep and steam clean in there, and once all *that* was done, there was no point in not wet-swiffering the living room and calling it a day.

Only I couldn't call it a day, because that was all ( before I stood a clinic shift. )

We also had an ex-military guy approach us and ask about escort training. Fearless Escort Leader is also ex-mil, so they had a grand old time swapping stories.

I topped off my gas tank on the way back, and was approached by Bobby The Pop-Up Body Guy. That sounds a little rude, but what he was actually doing was approaching people in the gas station to see if his team could take our cars around back and knock out the dings. Now, I've been mellow enough about the duct tape holding on the bumper to leave it on since September 2011 but it bothers my father SO MUCH that my main Christmas present this year was his offer to pay for all the body work *and* the rental car... which is time that I don't want to deal with. So I thought whatthehell, and let them work on it.

I got back with just barely enough time to take a desperately needed shower before rushing off to the Jane Austen Cafe at Riversdale mansion. I'll give a fuller description if people want, but basically we were discussing Pride and Prejudice and changes in women's lives (via the changes in what is considered "an accomplished woman" from then to now). I met a woman who writes Regency romances and another who is a mover and shaker of the Jane Austen Society of North America, which I have flirted with joining before and most likely will do now.

Then it was back to Bobby the Pop-Up Body Guy to clear my throat loudly and point out that while all traces of duct tape and dent have been removed, the bumper cover was still pulling loose. So I watched while the lower corner of it was screwed in... I don't quite understand how that worked but it's holding on now, so who cares?

I have three loads of laundry to do and then I shall feel I will have completely earned an agenda for tomorrow that reads, in its entirety:
1) Wear flannel PJs all day
2) Finish reading Pride and Prejudice
3) Read magazines.

For the Little Free Library fans, I wish I'd written down the books I'd put out after Snowmageddon, because a good third of them have vanished - quite likely via the local dogwalker who has requested cookbooks and the Verizon people who, although they couldn't sell me FIOS, did ask if they could take books. It turns out, though, that the door has warped, allowing the wind to whip it open - which means that during a windy rain, the books inside are in trouble. I need to come up with a catch that will hold up to wind and yet not confound the people who want books.

So remember last week when I was all organized and shit and Got Things Done? I admittedly got things done, but this time they fought back. Hard.

Lunches for 4 of the 5 days of the week are made, despite the fact that they aren't what I expected to make. Breakfasts for 5 of 5 weekdays are made, and WHY do I keep craving american cheese omlettes? I cannot have american cheese omlettes every morning. They are fattening. They cannot be made in advance. AMERICAN CHEESE ISN'T EVEN REAL, IT'S "CHEESE FOOD"!!! When they have to explain that what you're eating is actually food, it's time to stop eating it.

...okay, I kind of derailed there. But that's the kind of week it's been. Still, the tires on my car got checked and more air (for free), and Idris popped a stitch (actually it came unknotted) and she got checked for free, and now Mulan's got an unknotted suture and maybe it's because neither of them acts like they're being held together with glue and polyester thread and instead I just watched Idris gallop the entire length of the living room and jump up on the radiator.

They get their stitches out next Wednesday, if they don't all pop on their own by then.

I stood a shift at the clinic. We were showing one of ours the ropes; they were showing one of theirs the ropes. I called a priest "darlin'." ("You don't have to talk to him if you don't want to. *opens clinic door*. "Don't listen to her! She doesn't run your life!" "Neither do you, darlin'.")

I got an iphone, which was a long process of watching the FedEx delivery van online right up to the point where I went "Oh, fuck, I have to sign for this and I'm at work" followed by reading the thing stuck to my door and going "Oh, fuck, I have to wait 3 hours and drive for a half hour each way to sign for this thing." Then it was two trips to AT&T and one to T-Mobile and a phone call to AT&T and a very long session with my computer and I finally got a working iphone.

Someone asked me how I liked it. I had to confess that I hadn't actually used it yet.

I have cooked a turkey. I have, in fact, *badly* cooked a turkey. This is the third turkey I've fucked up, so I officially give up on cooking turkey. At least this time it was undercooked, so it can be fixed. (There are three containers in the fridge right now - cooked turkey, almost cooked turkey, and utterly raw turkey. Also 3 bags of bones etc. in the freezer.)

I did not get to make the new pot roast base (having also fucked up a pot roast. Seriously, who fucks up a pot roast by overcooking it? Pot roast was made to be cooked for ages.) I'm trying beef neck, goat chunks, and smoked turkey neck in this base.

As you can see, iphone or not, free checkups or not, it's been a disgruntling week.

I also moved the litterbox and totally reorganized a closet that needed it badly. I wish I'd taken before and after pictures; you wouldn't believe the difference!

Ack. Okay, enough whining, a Little Free Library wrapup. I've seen two people looking at it - one guy who I talked to, and one woman with her head stuck in it (people always lean into it, I don't have the books pushed too far back, so I don't get that) while someone waited in a car below.

Oh! I've discovered the cure for the leaks! Water's still getting in, but Ikea is selling little metal trivets, just some metal rods welded together, about 7" square. Two trivets slightly interlocked go from edge to edge of a shelf, and raised the books that vital half-inch to keep them out of the heavy rain and flooding that happened one night. Huzzah!

APPEARED: The Hobbit, Richard III, Parsifal, the Idylls of the King.

REAPPEARED: Bright Star

LEFT: 172 Hours, Best American Travel Writing, Bright Star, Eggsecutive Orders, The Hobbit, I Capture the Castle, "Murder Quality" (I wrote the title in shorthand; now I don't remember what it stood for), Night Circus, Sophie's World, The State of the Onion, Tombs, Why We Broke Up, and World Without End.

I didn't think either of those White House Cook mysteries (Eggsecutive & Onion) would *ever* go! They went at different times, so I don't know if they went to the same place.

For someone who dropped working on the newsletters because scanning through so much and then writing the links was getting to me -- and I worked on the "little" newsletter! -- I've let my linkdump post get to terrifying propositions. So even though I'd normally break this up into posts of various topics, y'all are just going to have to poke through for the topic(s) of most personal interest.

THIN ORANGE LINE
WACDTF is about to start asking for volunteers to cover clinics in Annapolis. For training and other information, please check their website.

CABIN PRESSURE: The Traveling Lemon Project
Let me explain. No is too much; let me sum up. The Qikiqtarjuaq episode of Cabin Pressure (available for $2 on iTunes!) introduced the concept of the Travelling Lemon game. pudupudu decided that it would be really nice for fans to take pictures of lemons by national landmarks and send them to writer John Finnemore. This project has included Roger Allum's confused but in-character posing and citrus-photobombing Ben Cumberbatch as he signed in NYC.

DISCWORLD
If you read only one link from this post, let it be Mr. Vimes'd Go Spare, a brilliant fic about the consequences as Sam Vimes passes from life and into Watch legend.
Also, if you didn't know, the North American Discworld con is in Baltimore in 2013.

DOCTOR WHO
The Bigger on the Inside shawl pattern This is so totally going to turn into my "the convention hotel is too cold" project.
Fan-made 50th Anniversary tribute vid; The Tale of a Madman in a Box

SHERLOCK STUFF
A general note: All S2 spoiler cuts come off on Memorial Day. I will continue to use the 4-letter acronyms for the episodes because I like them.

Misc, no spoilers
There is discussion of bringing the Frankenstein play to Broadway, with Cumberbatch.
Simon Pegg & Ben Cumberbatch fooling around on Twitter
Preorders are now available for Sherlock's Home: The Empty House, a book to aid the saving of Undershaw.
MetroeXpress article about the Save Undershaw flash mob in Trefalger Sq.
B.C. boggles with great diplomacy over slash and crossover art
Flickr photostream of BC in NYC
In a NY Times interview, Benedict Cumberbatch mentions seeing Otters That Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch. redscharlach dies.
I just love this picture
redpanda13 pointed me at this giggle-worthy t-shirt, while beledibabe showed me this one.

General Fic rec (No Spoilers)
I've recced the pixel version of "Adequacies", in which Sherlock tries to figure out how to help John's nightmares. Now there's podfic.
The Chronicle of Unfinished-ness It took 30 years for John and Sherlock to actually have the perfect date.
Crack from the meme: Sherlock uses ventriloquism to make the skull talk to John
I may have recced this already: Auto correct gets smutty


( NYC Interviews & Other nonfic S2 Links (SPOILERS) )

( S2 SPOILER fic, vids, etc. )

S3 Information
Season 3 will be filmed in 2013 and will air in the UK and then PBS that year.

DO NOT EVEN THINK OF CLICKING UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN S2:
*SPOILER*SPOILER* Mark Gatiss drops a hint *SPOILER*SPOILER*
SAME SPOILER different article


( Sheep and Wool Festival )

Also, for a non-drinker, it's a bit startling that afterwards, I bought 2.5 *cases* of wine at Linganore. It's my year's supply of cooking wine: a bottle a month of May wine, 6 meads (I bought it for poaching chicken; I was told that people swear by doing ham in it and now I can't wait to try), 6 of merlot (pot roast) and 6 traminette (poaching pears, although I'll also give the mead a whirl at that). I've also got 2 bottles of chocovin and one "adult chocolate milk" at the Philly flower show, which I think have a future in truffles. Literally.