It’s 12:39 a.m. on August 7th, and I have very little to tell you about my life because I’m eating, drinking, working with students, watching too much YouTube, and not sleeping near enough. All the student stuff is kinda sorta protected by FERPA (and I’m not feeling like getting into the Come to Jesus conversations I’m having to have with a few of them), so here is the stuff I’ve been watching for the last week or so on YouTube. There’s A LOT of them, so I’m putting a cut in this post. Click on “Continue reading” to see the whole shebang. (And yes, I have a weird YouTube algorithm.)
Category Archives: Politics
Catching Up: June 24, 2022 Edition
Let’s jump in.
Oh yes… comments are turned off because nothing I’m saying is up for debate or discussion. Disagree with me on your own blogs and Facebook walls.
[+] Things I should not have to say. A 7 year old girl choked in her sleep and died a week ago, and a local website put up a Facebook post to garner support for the family. Most people are responding and showing support, but some f-ing idiots have taken the opportunity to hijack it and start speculating about how it was due to the COVID vaccine.
…
WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!?!? YOU DON’T POST THAT S*** ON A POST THAT THIS GIRL’S GRIEVING FAMILY IS TAGGED IN AND CAN SEE!!!! YOU IDIOTS ARE NOT ENTITLED TO AN AUTOPSY REPORT OF WHAT HAPPENED!!! SHUT YOUR F****** MOUTHS AND GO THE F*** AWAY!!!!
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #1. Election Day is November 8, 2022. Show up if you want to vote out the idiots who confirmed Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. If you think the current Supreme Court is acceptable, feel free to skip this election.
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #2. Susan Collins is butthurt because Brett Kavanaugh allegedly misled her and had given her his word that he wouldn’t vote to overturn abortion. Honey, we told you he was a lying jerk and you didn’t listen. Instead, you voted to confirm him and screwed over the nation. And you’re surprised that he did what he told you he wouldn’t do?
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #3. If you are disappointed with the decision today, you live in a red state, and/or your senator is one that voted to confirm Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett, show up at their office and make your opinion known to them. Better yet, bring a few friends and peacefully assemble when they’re in town and not in DC ruining the country. Make sure they see you with their beady little eyes and hear *EXACTLY* what you have to say. Use interpretive dance and hand puppets if necessary.
Is your senator not running again and is the Republican candidate campaigning near you? Show up at the campaign stop and make your wishes known with a beautifully-designed sign. Make sure you spell all the words correctly because we need our movement to be understood and not used as an example of what not to say on a sign.
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #4. In 2006, I was on the drive from southern California to Montana when I started bleeding badly. This was weird because my period wasn’t supposed to be coming. It was serious enough that I was googling urgent care locations and emergency rooms in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City in case I needed to be seen, but I was terrified enough of the medical bill that would probably result, so I hemorrhaged blood and tissue for three days until I could get to the clinic in Montana. The chief of medicine was an a****** and told my nurse practitioner that I was a “hysterical pregnant woman having a miscarriage”, and all they offered me after an ultrasound (which showed nothing left in me) and three pregnancy tests was some progesterone. My next period showed up at the wrong time, and I opted to just bleed until my cycle normalized.
Ten years later, I was telling all of this to the resident seeing me here in Mount Vernon, and she informed me that I had very likely had a miscarriage and that they should have gone in and done a D&C to make sure that everything was indeed out. What was not done due to laziness on the part of the chief of medicine (who was eventually fired for abusive treatment of nurses) could now be illegal because Montana is one of those states with “trigger laws”.
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #5. For those who are saying that doctors aren’t going to refuse to perform D&C’s on miscarriages because of these laws, it’s already happening in Alabama. I’m scared that doctors will refuse to operate on women who are having ectopic pregnancies because they’re afraid of being charged under some of the more draconian abortion laws.
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #6. I have always said that I wouldn’t wish my pregnancy experience on my worst enemy.. but I’m rethinking that. I think that the senators who confirmed Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett would have a very different take on things if their threshold for calling in sick was throwing up three times on their way to work, they could only keep the glucose solution down for 30 seconds before violently throwing it up, they had to have an emergency c-section by themselves in the middle of the night after a 90-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital with an ICU, they had scar tissue adhesions so severe they couldn’t bend over for 7 months without almost passing out from the pain, they developed several autoimmune diseases as a result of their traumatic birth, and the scar tissue from their c-section was so bad that their surgeon discovered their reproductive organs twisted when they were opened up for a hysterectomy. I think they need to experience the terror of their period being late and the possibility of 9 months of bedrest, the threat of almost dying in childbirth AGAIN, the threat of gestational diabetes, the threat of financial ruin due to being unable to work, and the knowledge that their insurance company won’t pay for a hysterectomy because “it’s not an emergency” even though they’re done having kids.
[+] Thought on the Supreme Court verdict #7. Washington has reproductive freedom codified in law, and our governor Jay Inslee is working to get a constitutional amendment in the state protecting it. California and Oregon are joining Washington in making sure that women have a place to go if they need it.
Catching Up: May 26, 2022 Edition
Yee hah!
[+] I randomly came upon this YouTube channel, and it looks like one that might be something for me to watch when I can’t sleep.
[+] We had the Veteran’s Club doing their Memorial Day barbecue on campus on Thursday, and those serving had never seen so many people on campus before. I had to explain that this was the first Memorial Day one in 3 years, and many of us had REALLY missed it the last two years. I mean, there was a Veteran’s Day one in 2019, but the Memorial Day one usually happens in the sunshine and it’s a lot more fun because people hang out and eat in the plaza. It was like we got a piece of “normal” back yesterday.
[+] I will have a massive dump of pictures from this week tomorrow, but here are a few important ones.
(I verified it here.)
Catching Up: May 6, 2022 Edition
So here we are again after less than a week. Woo.
[+] I’m still having coughing spasms and asthma issues. It worsened after I had to clean out the exhaust fan in my bathroom. Great of me to have a dust allergy. My lungs are hopefully done yelling with me over that one…
[+] Bed, Bath and Beyond is also low on items, and I’m hearing whispers of bankruptcy. It’s too bad because I could see myself going there for a lot of stuff if I ever have the opportunity to move out of my parents’ house. (What was supposed to be temporary has now stretched to 6 1/2 years.)
[+] Speaking of such things, the secret to making a multiple generation household work is treating the adults like adults and each one doing their share. My parents own the house, but my mom and I have the same brain, which makes running the household easier. I’m having a lot of G-I issues, so food is not fun for me, and I’m having to cook or deal with my own food. It means that I’m not eating the same thing as my parents (or eating at the same time these days), and I have the right to make that call. If we have company and I can’t eat whatever my parents are making, I’ve earned the right not to eat it at age 41… but my parents are also not making me something else. It’s not a huge deal because I plan for those meals with things I can eat.
[+] I saw something a few months ago on the subject of trans athletes. It was an article in which Lia Thomas and her current times were compared to her pre-transition times. She has gotten slower since transitioning, and it was interesting to see how she (yes, SHE) compared to the top times for each gender. The conclusion was that the reason she was at the top time-wise (good, but not Katie Ledecky good) is that she was a top swimmer pre-transition competing with the guys. It has been interesting to see that trans women athletes are not infinitely better post-transition across other sports (I’ve looked), which kinda defeats the argument that they transition in order to beat all the women when they compete.
[+} Also… PRONOUNS MATTER. There was a fire fight on my Facebook last year on the subject, and it was exhausting. Here’s the thing: using ‘they/them” is not a huge freaking deal if it means that my students or coworkers feel respected. There are a lot of gender-related chromosome things that don’t manifest in visible ways, and it’s none of my business to ask, so I just honor people’s requests regarding their pronouns. Mine are in my work email signature, and I can promise that I haven’t been hit by lightning yet. Calling people by their preferred pronouns sends the message that I see them and I care enough to listen.
[+] This video cracked me up…
Catching Up: February 22, 2022 Edition
It’s been a few weeks, so…
[+] You know you suck at self-care when your therapist applauds you spending your Zoom appointment with her in bed because you are just too tired to care and you’re just trying to be gentle with yourself.
[+] I finally had to go into Urgent Care a few weeks ago to get my sinus infection checked out. I ended up second in line to get in, and they got me in a room super fast. I ended up with a resident who did a meh examination of me, and who also got pissy that yeast infections were listed as an allergy thing in my chart to Augmentin. Um dude, they’re listed in there so that you know how I react and will give me 2 doses of Diflucan if you decide to put me on Augmentin. He said he’d have to go back to his office and figure this out. Mhm. That’s nice. Go discuss this with your attending physician. I got a few minutes of catnapping in the exam chair/table before my nurse (who was comical) came back in with the encounter form and other paperwork. Guess who got her antibiotics plus Diflucan? THIS GIRL!
[+] At my next therapy appointment, my therapist asked if I had taken the next week off from work when she found out about the sinus infection. I told her that it had unintentionally worked out that way for the most part. I had a student doing a midterm, and I had to call in sick on Tuesday because I was coughing up a lung. I think I had maybe 4 billable hours for that week?
[+] Loser Loren Culp, the idiot who the Republicans ran as a gubernatorial candidate here against Jay Inslee (who beat the crap out of him) in 2020, is telling his constituents to order unproven COVID cures from doctors and nurses in Florida. Said providers have had their licenses pulled or suspended in other states and cannot see patients in Washington. Yes, let’s encourage your potential constituents to engage in stupid and illegal behavior that will likely kill them, you weapons-grade plum. No wonder you lost badly in 2020!
Then again, he’s just the spite candidate that the Mango Mussolini is endorsing because he’s butthurt at Dan Newhouse (the Republican incumbent) voting to impeach him last year for his role in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both Culp and MM sued and whined when they lost, so they kind of deserve each other. Dan Newhouse’s constituents don’t deserve someone as inept, inexperienced, and incapable as Culp, so I hope Newhouse beats him in the primary so that Culp can go back to being a loser and screwing up the county where he used to be police chief of the county seat. (He was laid off for costing his county $130K+ while he gallivanted around the state playing “gubernatorial candidate”.) I don’t want Newhouse to get re-elected (gotta make Washington bluer, especially eastern Washington where Newhouse’s district is), but he’s better than Culp any day.
[+] I’m in the home stretch on editing my church’s Lenten devotional book, and I just need to get everything onto Mailchimp. I hate Mailchimp with a passion, so you’re getting a blog entry while I procrastinate.
[+] The chief aggressor and troublemaker from Jon’s former parish in Montana died yesterday. Because I’m pretty sure I can’t bribe the organist to play “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” at the funeral and it’s not environmentally friendly to have someone pour a thing of kosher salt on her grave, I’ll be making donations in her memory to GLSEN and the Trevor Project. She was instrumental in trying to break up the parish in 2009 when the ELCA voted to bless same-sex marriages and ordain practicing GLBT folks, so I’m happy to donate to organizations that protect youth from people like her.
7 Quick Takes: Feeling Blah Edition
Worst case scenario. I saw this on Facebook and decided it needed to be shared as I’m a member of the “Almost Died in Childbirth” club.
Doc take #1. We’re done medicating Doc, but he is still averse to us putting hands on him. Mom gets away with it by giving him kibble or greenies by hand. The smell of both of those makes me feel nauseated, so I’m having to rely on my natural charm. He is not impressed.
Doc take #2. I’ve discovered that Mr. Sissy Stripes goes absolutely crazy with the laser pointer, so the two of us now play with it every night. He is comfortable enough with me to be silly and to emerge from under the bed to eat, so that’s progress. I actually had him playing in the open tonight, and he would bound across the floor, see me, and go hide behind an afghan on the floor. Repeat that a bunch of times, and you get a tired tiger kitty looking at you upside down. He is so funny. 🙂
Doc take #3. Doc has very squeaky little mew. He gives it to me when I come see him in the morning before his breakfast, and he will sometimes meow me while we play.
Nooooooooooooo! Buster Posey, catcher for the Giants, is retiring. He has been a fixture with the team for 12 seasons, including three World Series victories.
/rolls eyes To the people who are saying “let’s go, Brandon”:
You don’t sound witty or cool. You sound cowardly because you can’t just say what is on your mind. When I hear that phrase, I automatically subtract 50-75 IQ points. This applies to politicians as well, some of whom don’t have the IQ points to lose!
Snuggles,
me
Wow. I just saw Kelly’s post that this is the last week of Quick Takes. Hm.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
7 Quick Takes: A Harder Week Edition
Update on the sinus infection. I’m on Day 7 of my first round of Azithromycin. I’m not feeling amazing, but I’m not coughing to the point of choking. I’m still a bit stuffy, and I’m unfortunately almost out of Sudafed. (This is a problem because the regular Sudafed that you get from behind the pharmacy counter is the only thing that works to help me sleep… and my local pharmacy is out of it.)
Update on Jethro. Mom took Jethro back to the vet on Tuesday, and his bloodwork was trashed to the point where he could have had a blood clot if he kept going. The vet told her the prognosis, and she asked if they would be able to put him to sleep that day. When they said “yes” and told her she could have as long as she needed with Jet, she called Dad to come and sit with her. Jethro seemed to sense that it was his time because he relaxed and curled up in both Mom’s lap and Dad’s lap before they sedated him to give him the final shot. (Meanwhile, I had come out of my room after finishing with a student, and I figured out what was going on when I found Dad gone.) He went peacefully. We know that he is with his brother Homer again, and that is comforting since Homer’s death three years ago was really hard on all of us. (We adopted Minion the day after Homer passed away. He helped us heal.)
Minion has had a tiring schedule of guarding Mom and cuddling her (because Jet is gone and Jet was Mom’s lap kitty) in addition to his normal Mama cuddles with me. I’ve got feelers out on Petfinder for a Maine Coon cat or at least another one that might be a good buddy for Minion, who is definitely feeling Jet’s absence even if Jet was a cranky old man.
Why I like living in a blue state. My governor gets crap from the Republicans in the eastern part of Washington about the mask mandate and the various vaccine mandates, but we’re not in the mess that Idaho is currently in.
Why do I believe that Idaho is that bad off? Well… it might have something to do with Idaho sending a bunch of their worst patients to Washington to take up our hospital beds. (The stupider people in eastern Washington have been going to Sandpoint and Coeur d’ Alene to shop because Idaho doesn’t have a mask mandate, so I have no sympathy for hospitals in those Washington counties because they’re doing it to themselves.) The Republicans in Idaho have been bickering over COVID precautions to the point where the lieutenant governor took the opportunity to issue an executive order banning mask mandates while the governor was out of state. (The governor canceled the executive order when he returned.)
Do I love having to mask up all the time? No. However, Governor Inslee issued the mandates two months ago because he gives a crap about the health of the people in the state. The members of Idaho’s state government seem to be only thinking of themselves.
Q & A with a nurse. A member of r/nursing on Reddit did a Q & A in order to dispel a bunch of myths about COVID, the vaccines, etc. Other than a few pieces of bad language, it’s a good read and explains about why the COVID vaccines were developed so quickly.
Worth watching. I had to watch this TED Talk in order to proofread a paper, and I really recommend it.
How have I been dealing with all of this? I am crocheting while I work with students or watch YouTube. I’m watching a lot of “Live PD” on YouTube because it relaxes me for some strange reason.
Some positivity this week. I was doing my weekly grocery shopping on Tuesday when a woman stopped me. She told me that she had seen me with Daniel the previous week and that I was doing a really good job with him. She then patted me on the shoulder and told me I was a good mother.
I honestly almost cried in the middle of Haggen when she said that to me. (I’m tearing up now thinking about it.) I don’t know if she knew how much I needed to hear all of that. It’s honestly getting me through the harder parts of the week, and it also is giving me patience with Daniel because someone out there thinks I’m doing things right.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.