Author Archives: Jen

About Jen

Jen isn't quite sure when she lost her mind, but it is probably documented here on Meditatio. She blogs because the world needs her snark at all hours of the night... and she probably can't sleep anyway.

Alex Pretti and Renee Good

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I don’t believe one damn word this administration is saying about either of them.

ICE Agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee in the face while she was trying to get away. He didn’t have internal bleeding. He was doing things right after the shooting that would have been impossible if he was bleeding internally.

Alex Pretti died defending a female protestor whose body he was shielding from ICE. They dragged him away, beat him, discovered his holster (which is not illegal in Minnesota), disarmed him, and emptied a clip into him. He never pulled his weapon. He had a freaking PHONE in his hand.

If you are making any attempt to justify their murders at the hands of ICE agents, SHAME ON YOU!!!!

7 Quick Takes: Make Jen Post Again Edition

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Saint of the Year. As I have for 13-14 years at this point, I used Jen Fulwiler’s Saint’s Name Generator. It gave me Saint Cecelia, so I forecast a lot of music in my future.

— 2 —

Word of the Year. I also did Jen’s Word of the Year Generator and it gave me the word “dance”. This should be an interesting year…

— 3 —

Protesting. I took part in the No Kings Day protest in October and the No War/No ICE protest in downtown Mount Vernon this weekend. It was interesting being at both of them with Daniel. He was a pretty good sport even though it was raining at the No King’s Day protest, and the wind was cutting on Saturday.

— 4 —

Floods. For those watching the news in December, my town was indeed one of the areas that flooded. There’s a flood wall in downtown Mount Vernon that can be reinforced and made larger, and the MAGAt grumps were complaining about the expense of it… and it was shown to be worth the cost when the Skagit River crested at a record high. The reinforced and augmented flood wall held with one foot to spare. My family was never in danger — there’s enough elevation change that I was far above the 100-year flood plain — but I did know people who were evacuated. I described the vibe that week as being like the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake while we were waiting for aftershocks.

— 5 —

Ouchie. I broke a tooth creatively, and I was displeased to discover that all the emergency dentists had taken the two weeks from December 20th to January off. I managed to get seen on January 2nd, and discovered that referred pain is a thing because the problem child tooth was at the top of my jaw instead of the bottom. It had to be extracted, and I needed A LOT of Tylenol in the 10 days that followed.

— 6 —

Christmas Eve. We had a lot of gatherings over the Christmas period, and Christmas Eve was our quiet day. I had church that night and even had a reading (the same one I’ve had for 5 years).

— 7 —

Sandwich generation FTW! My mom had a cardiac ablation on December 8th, and it went off without a hitch. Someone from my parish was assisting with the procedure, and I got a huge hug when she saw me in the PACU. It was an uncomfortable feeling to have my mom as the one who needed care, but I’m thankful for her cardiologist, who is wonderful. It was also a strange thing to be introduced to her medical team by my full first name, middle name, and last name. (Anesthesia is fun.)

7 Quick Takes: Let’s Get Jen Posting Again

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Let’s do an old-fashioned 7 Quick Takes post to see if I can pull together the ability to post again.

Uno

Don’t take medical advice from a disgraced attorney and a conman. I was going to dedicate a post to the idiocy that was the announcement of the alleged link between autism and Tylenol by Donald Trump and RFK Jr. The problem: I don’t have the spoons to go into why those two losers are the last people who should be giving medical advice. I mean… Donald Trump can’t even pronounce “acetaminophen”.

You can find videos from people with credentials on the subject here, here, here, here, and here. Studies are here and here.

Dos

Cancel culture and my local health system. The day after Dumb and Dumber held their autism press conference, I was at my local Urgent Care getting my right hand examined because I had irritated it while crocheting. (I stress-crochet.) There isn’t a good way to brace it with commercially-available braces, so the doctor had the nurse MacGuyver something for me with an ACE bandage. I also got a lab slip for them to run a bunch of rheumatology tests in case this has a connection there. (They did x-ray it, and my hand is not broken.)

While I was waiting for someone to take my blood, I heard one of the lab techs talking loudly about the Charlie Kirk memorial, the autism press conference, and a bunch of fallacies about how “it *MUST* be Tylenol because we didn’t have autism in the 60’s and 70’s until we got Tylenol.” (Yeah, no. Autism has been a known condition since 1911, Aspberger was doing experiments on autistic kids in the 1930’s, and Tylenol wasn’t marketed to the public until the 50’s.) I corrected her when I got in the room, told her how damaging her spread of misinformation was for autistic people like me and Daniel, and told her sternly to get her politics out of her job. She glared at me, and I reported her to Patient Safety because there is the risk of a patient hearing her and doing something ill-advised like taking ibuprofen during pregnancy. My health system doesn’t screw around, and I received word that she was repremanded. Still, she shouldn’t be even giving patients medical advice.

Seriously...

Tres

Charlie Kirk. Let me be be abundantly clear on this…

NOBODY. DESERVES. TO. BE. KILLED. FOR. THEIR. POLITICAL. BELIEFS. NO. MATTER, HOW. ABHORENT. THEY. ARE.

Kirk was a horrible human being on many levels, and his words did lots of damage to this country. That does not excuse his assassination.

Quatro

This is incredibly inappropriate. This raid on a Chicago apartment building is over-the-top in terms of how egregious it was. They dragged children out, some without clothing, and shoved them into U-Haul trucks, they poured out people’s food and medication (which could cost thousands to replace), and they detained people indiscriminately. This was a black neighborhood, and it was absolutely meant to trigger fear.

I cannot even understand how people are justifying this behavior. Seriously. This is Nazi Germany level atrocity

Cinco

Funeral with a pr0n troll. No, I am not making this up. The patriarch of a local farm family died, and he was a member of my parish. We had a full sanctuary with extra seats in the back, and there were an extra 100 chairs in the parish hall with a rented big-screen TV. I was trying to troubleshoot a sound issue in the parish hall when a video of someone performing a sex act popped up on Zoom. Everyone watching from home on Zoom saw it, and it appeared on the big-screen TV. Cue me and my partner on the sound board doing everything imaginable to kick them out. Another funeral guest finally came upstairs, and helped us adjust some settings to keep them out. I was already fighting severe depression and hadn’t slept the night before, so this hit me and my perfectionism really hard. The priest doing the funeral brought me pie the next day as an apology, and my partner got prayed over on Sunday, which I missed because I was home with a puking kid. I needed that laying on of hands badly, so they did it for me the following Sunday. I also got to spend 8 hours going through Zoom’s knowledge base with a fine-toothed comb to lock down the public Zoom meetings we use for worship and Bible study.

Seis

Purple Revolution. There’s apparently a bunch of MAGA folks who are feeling the consequences of voting for Donald Trump, and they’re trying to call for everyone to come together in a “purple revolution” to fix this. They are hitting a wall when it comes to Democrats because WE. FREAKING. TOLD. YOU. ALL. OF. THIS. WOULD. HAPPEN. AND. YOU. VOTED. FOR. THE. JERK. ANYWAY. Apparently, we’re supposed to trust them now? You idiots laughed about “owning the libs” and you’re complaining about your families refusing to talk to you, losing your health care, and tariffs screwing you over? Not our problem.

Siete

Prayers needed. Please pray for Lane Claudia, the oldest daughter of Jen Fulwiler, the creator of the 7 Quick Takes. Lane just had serious brain surgery on Monday, is facing a long recovery, and they’re still waiting for pathology reports on the lime-sized tumor they removed. Jen is asking for the intercession of Our Lady of Champion as well as any Blesseds that need some work to do.

Catching Up: It’s June???? Edition

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I can’t believe it’s June…

Links might be Amazon affiliate ones.

[+] Decent pajama bottoms. These are completely rock my world. They’re short enough for me (5’1″ish with a freakishly low inseam), and they make me feel cute. I’d live in them if I could.

[+] Yarn goodness. My evening wind down activity has been crocheting things for different people and causes. I get yarn from Herrschners.Com or I check Amazon for some. I’ve put together a baby blanket and several prayer shawls with a few shawls waiting to be edged and two baby blankets in process.

[+] End of an Era. My priest had his last Sunday on the 8th. He was with us starting in January 2019, which means he got to go through the pandemic with us. His last service was a bilingual one with one of the diocesan staff present, his kids there (who all live far away, Aztec dancers doing the prelude and postlude, and a massive potluck with tamales, mole, a bunch of Oaxacan cuisine I can’t remember, and the standard white American potluck foods.

Habemus Papa

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I didn’t read any of the “Who Will Be the Next Pope” articles because the Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways, and being on those lists isn’t a guarantee. (Case-in-point: JPII wasn’t on any of those going into the conclave that elected him.) I tuned into the procession into the Sistine Chapel yesterday when an Orthodox Jewish friend clued me into it happening. I’ve got to say that it was something interesting to listen to while cat-napping. Beautiful chant and fun to listen to cardinals making the oath on the Gospel book in Latin. Cardinals Dolan and Cupich apparently speak Latin with a flat Midwestern accent, which sounded very different than cardinals who spoke Romance languages sounded.

So am I happy with the selection of Prevost? VERY! My prayers for the new Pope were “someone more similar to Pope Francis” and “NOT RAYMOND BURKE”. I got both wishes. 🙂 All I knew going into this was that Prevost existed, and everything I read about him only made me happier. He speaks multiple languages, has spent time in the Global South, is very justice-oriented, etc.

I know there are some who are going to claim that I like him because of his criticism of Trump and Vance, and that’s not true. The Pope’s criticism of them is expected… because all of his criticism is based on their actions and words being against the words of Jesus in the Gospels. Still, I was way too amused when I saw this on Facebook:

(I do enjoy a good trolling after all.)

in any case, I’m super happy for my Catholic friends. The Holy Spirit came through clutch today, and you seem to have a good leader. 🙂

Pope Francis

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AP News: Pope Francis dies at 88

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant, Francis. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Slava Ukraini!

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I can’t stand Mike Pence or many of his positions. He is, however, a man with a spine as he demonstrated on January 6, 2021 when he refused to bow to Donald Trump’s order not to certify the election.

He posted this on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mike Pence standing up for Ukraine.

I bring this up because of the utter dumpster fire of a meeting that happened in the Oval Office today. Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their minions expected Volodymyr Zelenskyy to grovel and thank them for the Russia-centric peace deal Trump “negotiated”. They had a rude awakening when Zelenskyy actually advocated for his country and refused to engage in their screaming match. Both Trump and Vance looked utterly foolish and they berated him. I think the most telling thing was Vance scolding him for not saying “thank you” once during the meeting for the mediocre deal they thought he should accept.

Zelenskyy is, like Trump and Vance, not a career politician. He had an entertainment career before becoming the leader of Ukraine, much like Trump did. However, he has stepped up and put his country first consistently over the last three years. Trump has never served anyone other than himself and his own interests. Zelenskyy has more support in his country than Trump will ever hope to enjoy in this country because Zelenskyy truly puts the Ukrainian people first instead of bowing to dictators like the ones Trump counts as friends.

Let me make my position clear.

Slava Ukraini!