I started a new job in May.  I was just looking over this week's pay stub, and I got a $500 bonus for sticking with it six weeks.  *laugh*  (I'm testing software for cockpit displays, and it really is that boring...)

But  looking at it some more...I only got $300.  The feds confiscated $200.

There's a dozen Founders spinning in their graves, but they're as powerless as I feel.


I wouldn't mind as much if it wasn't going to abominable waste like prayer rugs for terrorists, the Tiger Woods Foundation, another building with Robert Byrd's name on it....  But stealing my earnings to give them away to non-public projects is WRONG.  I need that money for my retirement, so I'm not a leech on society, and I'm also saving for my niece and nephew's education.   But even if I just wanted to go buy designer shoes, that's my right.   Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...and the right to enjoy the fruits of my labors. 


Grrrrrr.

As I state in my bio, I'm a conservative never-married (non-lesbian) non-mother over the age of 30.  This seems like a contradiction.  Conservatives hate women in the workplace, love marriage, etc.  Well...I would rather be a "happily married mother of three" but I haven't met anyone who wants to be the husband of an ugly software engineer.  I tell my mother that if God had wanted me to be married, he'd have made me someone else.  :)

One thing that's interesting to me is that outside of my family (ardent Lutheran on both sides), people seem to think that if I want a baby, I should just call a clinic and make a baby.  I'm fascinated by how quickly out-of-wedlock birth went from shameful mistake to celebrated choice!  But there seem to be a lot of messed-up fatherless kids wreaking havoc on the world already, and I'm not deluded enough to think that I'm too special to birth a statistic--poverty, drugs, crime...   In the future, if my career stabilizes, I'd like to help foster kids.  In the meantime, I have a cat.

I take a lot of grief about "only mothers are real women" from conservative women.  I don't believe you have to procreate before you can advocate limited government, increased national defense, border security, judges who judge rather than legislate, etc. 

I don't know any never-married women over 25 who aren't lesbians (which I suspected was because I'd lived in Iowa most of my life, but I haven't met any in Milwaukee, either).  If you are one, please drop me a line so I don't feel so alone!