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I’m an occupational therapist. Specifically, I do research and am a Home Health therapist. This means that three days a week, I travel all over St. Louis and walk into the home of someone else and “do therapy.”

Home Health OT is one of those professions in which you come into very intimate contact with other people. I see people’s homes, filthy or sparkling. I arrive to find my clients in their button up shirt and tie, or in nothing but diapers.

I have earned my “Home Health Wings,” which means I have had bodily fluids on my clothing. Once, a client had a seizure while I was working with him. During said seizure, his bladder opened up and poured urine on my legs and feet. I have learned the value of having a change of clothing in my car.

Sometimes, I am the only person that my client sees all week. I am the only “visitor.” We maintain professional relationships, but often I am the only one who will lend an ear.

People confide in me their fears, their sadness, their joy, their confusion, their strengths. They ask questions that are hard to answer.

The other day, an older woman said, with tears in her eyes, “My sister is not doing so good. My brothers yell at her to get up and open her eyes but she doesn’t. They are putting her on hospic. What’s a hospic?”

“Hospice?” I asked.

“Yeah… what is that?”

So I had to tell her that her sister was dying.

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This post, On telling people tough things…, originally appeared on Ziztur.com: Finding joy in being wrong on August 31, 2010. Tweet This
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Okay, so here’s the deal. I have been clearly absent from my beloved blog for several months.

Fear not, bloggarinoes, for I am neither dead, nor incapacitated, nor trapped at the bottom of a well.

In fact, life here is for the most part wonderful. A few highlights:

1. I work. I recently earned a doctoral degree in occupational therapy. I am using that degree to do clinical work as a therapist and research. I am doing research because I love it, and doing clinical work because I don’t want to be an ivory-tower researcher who goes on telling people how to do OT with no clinical experience to speak of.

2. I own a home: Flimsy and I bought a house! We moved in at the end of June. It is stellar.  Pics will be forthcoming.

3. Flimsy and I are getting married! Planning a wedding is hard!

4. As soon as I had even a moment’s free time, I decided it would be a great idea to adopt a German Shepherd puppy.

5. My house, dubbed the SkeptiPalace, has become a hub for social activity, debates, book club, cuddle parties, and movie nights. I have an exceptional social life filled with amazing, intelligent people.

All of this has resulted in absolutely zero time to blog. It is as if I can either have a life here in cyberspace, or a life “out there” in the real world, but not both.

I am going to continue blogging. the focus of said blogging might change a little bit. Oh, we’ll still have in-depth analysis of skeptical and non-theist topics, but there also might be more research, homeownership, OT, etc. Enjoy!

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This post, Apologies for my absence…, originally appeared on Ziztur.com: Finding joy in being wrong on August 30, 2010. Tweet This
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Take note:  I am normally an extremely calm, laid-back sort of guy.  This is a spectacular example of how to pick a fight with me.  No, a war.

Brief background:  I’m fond of torturing myself by listening to BOTT radio network (a rather feel-good, sometimes more fundamentalist Christian station).  In the evenings, we hear Pastor Alistar Begg.  In the car, just now, I heard him say this, almost verbatim:

“Because, ladies, when you get married, you take your husband’s name.  New name, new identity.  New person.  You do this because your husband asks for the greatest portion of your respect, your devotion, and your love.  And that’s as it should be.  He would be a strange husband indeed if he were to say, ‘I have chosen you to be my wife, but I want you to know that you can go anywhere you want to go, you can do anything you want to do, and you can do it with whomever you choose.’  Ladies, you’d probably look at that man and ask, ‘Is that even a marriage?’  No.  It’s not a marriage.”

Eat shit, Alistar Begg.

I am that strange husband.  That will be my marriage.  My wife will not have a new identity; she will not be a new person.  She will be the same person I loved before our legal marriage.  She will be herself.  And my wife will almost certainly be happier than yours.  Exactly because I am a better person than you.

I decided a long time ago to take my wife’s name.  It is the rational and ethical decision.  And now, exactly because you said that, because you really believe those repugnant words, I am going to quote those same words in my wedding vows, slightly amended.

“I have chosen you to be my wife, but I want you to know that you can go anywhere you want to go, you can do anything you want to do, and you can do it with whomever you choose.  You can do all of these things not even remotely because I am giving you permission to, but because you are a person, and because I do not own the least part of your body and mind.”

Pastor Begg, I will take my wife’s name, and those words will comprise a portion of my vows.  I will do all of these things because fuck you.

I will endeavor to send a link to this post to Pastor Begg.

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This post, This is how you make me angry., originally appeared on Ziztur.com: Finding joy in being wrong on June 16, 2010. Tweet This
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