I don’t even want to talk about DACA because it’s a total disaster. It’s one of the worst, most shameful parts of Obama’s legacy. He left us stuck with this horror show and should just keep very quiet about it right now instead of making condescending noises about “young strivers.”

In effect, DACA turned 800,000 people into pawns for the Democrats to use in shady dealings of all kinds whenever it’s convenient, as we’ve seen today. Keeping people suspended, uncertain, always dependent on the possibility of yet another short-term extension is a cruel and unusual punishment that is completely immoral. How can anybody, a young person especially, live like this? Imagine not being able to make any kind of plan, any strategy of your own life. This is horrible. 

The strivers part just about did me in. You make people arrive in perpetuity, dangling the rotten carrot of another short-term bit of mercy for ever and ever. And then get on a high horse and go all self-congratulating on the very people you are screwing over. 

Americans! Make up your minds. Fucking make a decision already. Stop supporting the inhuman and cruel DACA and let these 800,000 human beings just live their lives without having to beg you for something every couple of years.

Fuck DACA. Fuck deferred action. Enough deferring. Enough. 

Klara learned to use the computer mouse. You’d think from this that we live in front of the computer but it’s not true. We use Skype once a week to talk to her “Kama” (grandma) and I showed her itsy bitsy spider and wheels on the bus a few times. 

And then I went to the kitchen to fetch some sunflower seeds and came back to discover her using the mouse to choose her favorite songs from the menu like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

Scary shit, this. 

Part of my class on Cuba was showing students a news clipping about recent events in Cuba.

“Is this fake news?” students asked.

We have messed with young people’s heads in unpardonable ways.

In personal immigration news, I got my citizenship exam scheduled for October 2. I have classes on this day but in the current environment I’m afraid to reschedule for later. 

I know many of my colleagues are reading this blog, so I want to communicate to them that I just heard from our Chancellor and he says that we’ll get our pay raise retroactive to July on our October or November paychecks.

The union is working for you.  

God, folks, I just saw a coyote. Right by my nextdoor neighbors’ house. It looked exactly like this:

And it just stared at me. I knew I heard weird howling at night and saw suspicious paw prints in the snow in winter but I didn’t expect to see one in the middle of the day. It was entirely unafraid of me. At first, I thought it was a fox, although it was bigger and had a different maw from the foxes I’d seen before. But I googled it, and it’s a coyote all right. 

I’m now afraid to go outside.

What was really dumb was that immediately after the doctors told me, “There’s no heartbeat, we are sorry, there’s nothing we can do”, they just left the room. And I was there alone for a very long time. So long that I eventually had to go look for them. They were nowhere to be found, so I had to ask the receptionist. She was not aware of what was happening and asked me cheerfully and very loudly, “So? Are you excited to meet your baby next week?”

It was dumb because the first thing I did after they left the room was run to the window. I don’t know why, it was completely unthinking. I could have jumped. Another person would have. 

I understand that they are a regular practice and they aren’t used to these cases but still, it’s a medical practice. Shit happens. They surely get miscarriages, birth defects, hormonal dysfunctions that lead to depression. 

The practice I was with when I expected Klara specialized in this kind of cases. They didn’t take anybody but women like me, so they at least knew how to react. Once when I was there for an appointment, it did happen. A woman came in who was in the last weeks of pregnancy, and they had to tell her the baby was not alive. The doctor stayed with her for one hour forty minutes. And then another hour with me because I was obviously not reacting very well to what was happening either. 

This is why I keep saying that all doctors need to take at least one course in basic psychology because they need to remember that they work with people and not malfunctioning machines. 

I never told this part to anybody before. 

You never know who you really are until something very very shitty happens. And then it’s like, “Oh, so this is who I am. Huh.” It’s all in there already but we don’t get a chance to find out in normal circumstances.

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of Eric’s death. We went to the cemetery but it’s hard to grieve with an 18-month-old who thinks a cemetery is a super fun place with all the plastic flowers and teddy bears and balloons. Plus, there is a pond with ducks, geese, huge red fishes and little turtles. By the end of the visit, we were all laughing and feeding Klara’s lunch to the animals.

I find it completely disgusting when people organize for the sole purpose of bullying a woman for daring to have an opinion. I think Wax’s article has a noticeable potential for humor, and I poked fun at its wording on this blog. But I’d rather chew my arm off than sign such disgusting, Soviet-like letters publicly to bully a colleague for expressing a point of view I might disagree with.

I condemn the idiots and the bullies who signed the linked piece. They are horrible people, and I wish somebody would tell them that to their dumb little faces.

And now let’s wait for the complete and utter silence from feminists who will studiously pretend to not notice that a female academic is being shushed into silence.