Because we all want to write more better...

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because if everyone did, I wouldn't be a comma fucker.

I've been a writer since I could string together a sentence. I've been an editor, professionally speaking, for more than 10 years now. I love language, words, sentences, breaking rules, playing with subtext. These things make me happy. What makes me sad also makes me an asshole, a "Grammar Nazi," and apparently, a "comma fucker." I present the evidence, shared by a Facebook friend earlier this week:

So yeah, Finnish: "pilkunnussija" literally translates to "comma fucker," or someone who corrects little or meaningless things.

Over the years I have learned that most people don't like to have their grammar corrected (exception: writers handing over manuscripts for an extended and intentional bout of comma fucking). I still do it silently. I no longer read comments on news stories or web sites. I hide Facebook posts by people I care about because I just cannot with the poor spelling and grammar. I cringe at an erroneous possessive apostrophe. I've sent kind and gentle (my opinion) emails to local businesses with misspelled signage.

In my defense, I don't do these things to feel intellectually superior. I do them because I have a dream. It's a big one, but I cling with every fiber of my being. I dream that every single person in the English-speaking world will complete early childhood education with an ingrained understanding of the difference between "your" and "you're" (yeah, I'm so fucking hung up on this that I once declined a second date with a repeat offender texter). I hope to never again have to explain that the correct idiom is "dog eat dog world," NOT "doggy dog world" (yes, this is a real thing that happened). And someday, in this perfect world, I will never again have to explain to a college graduate the difference between active and passive voice.

Trust me, my own mistakes make me cringe just as hard. I rarely read magazine pieces I've written once they have been published, lest I discover that an editor missed a wayward comma splice, misspelled word, or (gasp) changed my correct language to something less than correct. This blog is full of mistakes. There is a post somewhere around here in which I used "to" instead of "too." I beg your forgiveness, but use this example to illustrate 1) I am not a perfect comma fucker and 2) The fact that I discovered this error in hundreds of pages of archives and still remember it proves that I am harder on myself than anyone else.

I could go on about how texting and social media and a failing public educational system has ruined language, but I don't even use proper capitalization or punctuation in IM or emails to friends, so apparently I don't care. What I do care about: Journalism. Literature. Why media outlets thought it was a fantastic idea to ditch proofreaders and editors to save their struggling print publications, which people like me don't read anymore because spelling and factual errors are too damn distracting. Why e-book publishers charge for editing services, yet every single damn book I've ever downloaded for less than $2.99 (or free) was so full of grammatical inconsistencies I couldn't even tell if the writing was actually good.

Written communication matters to me and maybe I'm tilting at windmills. If so, I'll be quixotic until I draw my last breath. Call me pilkunnussija. Or comma fucker. Just spell it correctly.

*This post was sponsored by Grammarly, for which I received a trial period (but since I was hooked at "context optimized synonyms," I'd be telling you all about it anyway).

When politics gets personal...

(aren't all politics personal? Just wanted to share something here and then I'll shut up until after Tuesday.)

After I lost my job in 2008, I paid for COBRA for as long as I could legally do so. I did it on a freelancer's salary. I had little savings, which I was forced to use for stupid things like rent and food during the lean months. Then I moved to Austin for a job with a small agency that didn't offer health insurance (but hey, a regular salary and living in Austin? All good).

So in early 2010, my "healthcare" involved crossing my fingers, praying, and skipping medication (I take Metformin for Type 2 Diabetes) and meals to keep my blood sugar down. I lost 20 lbs. in the first couple of months after I moved, some due to stress and some from skipping meals to keep my BG low.

People who oppose "Obamacare" (mostly Republicans but I don't want to say ALL Republicans) think that people who don't have health insurance should just go to an emergency room if they get sick. There are a lot of problems with that logic, including the fact that taxpayers have to eat those costs when the uninsured person cannot pay an emergency room bill. Also, reactive healthcare is NOT THE SAME as proactive healthcare. I found out the hard way in March of 2010 when I ended up in the ER with acute pancreatitis.

I had been sick for weeks with nausea and pain in my abdomen. I was dizzy a lot, but attributed it to skipping meals. I had cut my dose of Metformin in half so I could make it last (my doctor in Charleston prescribed a few month's worth because she knew my COBRA ended the same month I moved to Austin). Even when it got so bad I could hardly stand up to take my dog outside, I didn't do anything. A few days later, I was working in my office at the agency when the pain in my abdomen was so bad I couldn't take a full breath. I called an "ask a nurse" hotline and they told me to get my ass to a hospital immediately.

I drove myself to the closest emergency room, which happened to be in the Catholic Healthcare system here in Austin. I don't remember a lot about it, other than I took my driver's license out of my bag and held it in my hand in case I passed out while driving. I remember parking in the garage, walking through the doors of the ER, handing the woman at the desk my ID, and nothing after that until I woke up with wires all over me hooked up to machines and tubes in my nose.

They took blood and x-rays and scans and finally told me I had pancreatitis. I knew it was something I was at risk for as a diabetic, but I didn't know how serious it was. Acute kidney failure. Respiratory distress syndrome. Heart failure. Before I even saw a doctor, the financial rep from the hospital came in and got my billing info. I was still in so much pain I was tearful, and even more so when I had to tell the money guy that I didn't have insurance. He told me not to worry because they "discount" bills for uninsured patients.

I had been in the hospital for less than four hours when they gave me some medication and told me I needed to stay overnight for observation. No. There was no way I could rack up an ER bill for an overnight stay and still keep my head above water financially. I wasn't keeping my head above water very well as it was. So after another hour of negotiating, they let me sign paperwork saying I wouldn't sue the hospital if I died and sent me home with medication and a three-page bill. For $4,500. I drove myself home and cried the whole way. I slept that night with the deadbolt unlocked and my phone in my hand in case I needed to call 911, but let me say at this point I had been sick and miserable for so long, I felt pretty ambivalent about whether or not I woke up in the morning. Just being honest.

So as a person without health insurance, the hospital also gave me information for one of its clinic affiliates so I could follow up and get medication and lab work for a co-pay based on my salary. I went to that clinic for almost two years, up until just a few months ago when I could use my new health insurance from my job (I had to pay into it for a year before using it because at the time they could still deny anything related to a pre-existing condition, in my case, diabetes). I was grateful to have any healthcare at all, but the healthcare you get at a "free" health clinic is vastly different from what you get when you have health insurance.

It wasn't waiting for hours for appointments, having my blood drawn by nursing students, or never seeing an actual doctor (I saw nurses and physicians assistants the entire time). I was accustomed to following doctor's instructions. When they prescribed a new medication, I took it. I had no other options.

Which leads me to now. Just a few months ago, I was able to make an appointment with a doctor in my preferred care plan with my health insurance. I found out a few things. One: I took two medications prescribed by the health clinic for over a year that are known to cause liver damage when taken together. Two: At one point earlier this year, I took a new medication for a couple of months (the clinic gave me a bag of samples) that my new doctor told me had been recalled in 2011.

I am lucky. I am OK. I have liver damage, but it isn't permanent because the liver is great at repairing itself. I have to give myself shots in my stomach for a month or two or three, depending on how long it takes, but I can afford the medication I have to inject myself with because I have health insurance. If I didn't? $470 a month for the medication, plus needles, sharps containers, etc.

Again, I was grateful to have access to ANY healthcare when I was uninsured. I finally finished paying off my ER bill early this year. And I survived. What makes me angry - furious, actually - is the way many people dismiss Obamacare by saying uninsured people can go to an emergency room or free clinic. The clinic I went to wasn't out to murder me, they have such a large patient load that they literally cannot keep up with things like recalled medication or which medications interact negatively with others. The PA I saw probably met with upwards of 50 patients a day. They're doing the best they can under the weight of a huge increase in uninsured patients (job losses = people who cannot afford COBRA, lengthy unemployment = COBRA runs out after 18 months). I am by no means a worst case scenario. I almost died. I was so sick I wanted to die. But other people without insurance really do die every single day because they don't have access to adequate healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act fixes these things at the root of the problem: Insurance and pharmaceutical companies. If it had gone into effect a year before it did, I would have been able to get my own insurance without being denied for having diabetes. I wouldn't have been charged more than a man my age for the same insurance. The medication I need to take would have been affordable. Every damn time I hear a politician dismiss Obamacare by talking about the "uninsured masses" that should just go to an emergency room when they get sick, I think about the people I saw in the waiting room every time I had an appointment at the free health clinic. Sick elderly people, pregnant women, children...I want every politician who opposes Obamacare to give up their own health insurance for one year and try to get healthcare. I want to see them with their sick kids, tearfully waiting for hours to see a nurse who may or may not help. I want to see them give up their fucking Ambien and Viagra and try to get help from an ER when they cannot sleep because they voted NO on a "let's help the poor people please" bill.

I haven't told a lot of people what happened to me when I was uninsured and what I am dealing with now as a result, so I think sometimes people get confused as to why I so adamantly support President Obama and his healthcare plan. To the Republican politicians who dispute the fact that uninsured people often DIE WHILE THEY ARE TRYING TO GET CARE, I say fuck you. Fuck you and your white collar golden fucking parachute health insurance. Fuck you and your salary. Fuck you and your summer home. Fuck you, your private plane, your wife's facelifts, your show horses, and your complete inability to relate to what the American public is going through every single day.

There are a lot of reasons why I voted for President Obama in 2008 and during early voting last week. The fact that he has a workable plan and genuinely cares about what the average person in the U.S. faces on a regular basis is just one. It will probably take more than four more years to fix the mess the Bush administration created, but I know he'll do his level best. For me, and so many, many others like me, it can mean the difference between life and death.

End rant. Thanks for listening. This is just my story and I'm glad I'm still here to tell it.

The downside to working from home...

Is that you're home all day. Which means you're home when the doorbell rings. I've had two solicitation visits this week from people selling weird "natural cleaning products" (they really need to do that door to door?), one from a sketchy guy selling "magazines" (I saw that one coming and told him I didn't know how to read), and this afternoon, one from two Mormons on bicycles who wanted to know if I'd be interested in discussing the fact that there is a prophet on earth.

Nothing against Mormons - I actually know a few progressive Mormons and they're nice folks - but I don't like home visits from religious types, especially if they're part of a religion that almost singlehandedly helped raise the most money to support Prop 8 and defeat legal same-sex marriage in California.

So when the LDS boys showed up on my doorstep, I didn't invite them in. I let them begin their spiel earnestly before I held up my hand to interrupt. "Nothing personal, guys. I'm sure you're very nice people. But your religion isn't inclusive. In fact, your church donates millions of dollars to make sure gay people will never have the same rights as everyone else. Therefore, I don't want to hear what you have to say."

They both just stared at me. "Unless that's something you're willing to discuss before you leave me with a bunch of pamphlets about LDS?"

I got a mumbled "thanks ma'am" from one of them before they backed down the steps.

Honestly, if I hadn't been in the middle of a project that required my full concentration and if it hadn't been the 4th time this week I'd been interrupted by people ringing my doorbell, I might have invited them in if they'd been willing to discuss why their church hates gay people. I might have told them that some of my very best friends are gay, that my sister is gay, and that I think there is something very wrong with a religious organization putting a great deal of money into a campaign against equality (particularly in this economy - aren't there other things the Mormon church could have done with all of that money instead of taking out hateful anti-gay ads?). Also, my gaydar works with almost 100 percent accuracy and I think I picked up some vibes from one of those LDS guys, so it might have been an interesting discussion. I actually enjoy debating theological issues.

If I worked in an office, they never would have made an assumption that I had the time to listen to their story of a prophet that walks the earth, of the Book of Mormon, or read their pamphlets. But because I work from home, they probably think I'm a shut-in, a housewife with some time on my hands, or independently wealthy and extremely bored.

Maybe I was a little mean about it. I hadn't realized how much pent-up hostility I've been carrying about the issue. And I still don't understand how same-sex marriages is going to "lessen the validity" of heterosexual marriages, more than 50 percent of which end in divorce anyway. In fact, I believe I just heard that notorious religious zealot and bigot Mel Gibson and his wife are divorcing. Even though his church "doesn't believe in divorce." Are there any religious groups left on the planet that aren't comprised of stunningly ignorant hypocrites?

To sum up, I'm going to ignore the doorbell during the day unless Fedex or UPS truck is outside. Because I don't want to be responsible to marring the psyches of a couple of young, earnest, naive LDS "messengers."

Also: I know I have a good thing going. I get to work for myself in my pajamas most days, come and go as I please, pick and choose the projects I work on. And I'm happy. But don't think that means I'm going to stop bitching about day-to-day bullsh*t. Because I am fairly certain I will always do that. A Zen mind is a lifetime pursuit, yes?