Category Archives: Personal Issues

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. 🙂

I Can’t Believe This Even Has to Be Explained

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KOMO News: Ohio veteran calls for change after being denied heart transplant over vaccine refusal

I’ve also been hearing about how a relative of JD Vance is being denied a heart transplant over the same issue. Thee comment section for the KOMO News piece on Facebook is full of people who are completely clueless about why the hospital can (and should) do this, so I thought I’d explain this on here in case anyone is completely ignorant about why this is is absolutely fair and has nothing to do with politics.

When you receive a transplanted organ, you are on immunosuppression medication for the rest of your life to keep your body from rejecting the organ. This means that you are at an increased risk of dying from what might seem like a minor infection. As a result, transplant centers want to make sure that those receiving the organs are aware of the need to do some basic things like VACCINATE THEMSELVES to protect themselves and the organ that, in most cases, required someone’s death in order for it to be available for transplantation. This means that you must agree to be fully vaccinated to be put on the transplant registry at your transplant center, and for pretty much every transplant center, that means receiving the COVID vaccine. (I thought it was specifically a UNOS policy, but apparently, it’s up to every transplant center.) The COVID vaccine isn’t experimental, and the only excuse for not receiving it is if it’s going to put you into anaphylaxis. (I know of exactly one case where that has happened, and it was my former work wife Kim.)

This is likened to someone having to promise to avoid alcohol to receive a liver transplant. COVID is going to kill you if you’re immunosuppressed in order to receive your donated organ, so why wouldn’t you do your due diligence and be vaccinated? This isn’t complicated. The gentleman in Ohio isn’t willing to do what is required to receive a heart transplant, so his transplant center is refusing to put him on the list.

I had someone reply to me on Facebook and ask if I would take such a hard line if it was my loved one who was involved. My answer: “100% YES.” I would absolutely call out a family member in this case because their ignorance would be preventing them from receiving life-saving surgery. Granted, I only have one family member who refuses to be vaccinated (and I haven’t seen them since before pandemic started because of this), so this is unlikely, but I would absolutely remain in the stance that it’s the hospital’s decision and they should vaccinate themselves.

Catching Up: Bleh Edition

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I was hoping to post more often this year, but January was “one of those months”.

[+] Sick. I got a sinus infection early in the month, and then Daniel very politely shared his virus with me, which has been causing bad asthma exacerbation. What is even more fun is that they can’t do a lot for me because I can’t have oral steroids like Prednisone or Decadron. I’ve had to reschedule doctor’s appointments, miss the People’s March, and basically put my life on hold while I bond with my inhaler and nebulizer.

[+] The Felon of the United States (FOTUS). I expected Trump’s annexation of the Oval Office to be an utter dumpster fire, and I have not been disappointed. Thankfully, our former Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is now the governor, spent last year with his staff going over every part of Project 2025 and have filings drafted for every contingency. His successor as Attorney General, Nick Brown, has scored a point against the Trump administration on his first filing, which was the lawsuit that caused a federal judge in Seattle to put a moratorium on ending birthright citizenship. Judge Coughener (who is a Reagan appointee, by the way, in case anyone wants to complain about liberal judges) was pretty irritated that he had to rule on something so clear cut. Here’s hoping for more victories against Trump and his minions!

Catching Up: New Year’s Eve 2024 Edition

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Hello to everyone except the IDIOTS to re-elect Donald Trump and the 20 million people who decided not to vote.

Yes… I just said that.

I’m astonished at the stupidity of our country in electing someone who cannot speak in complete sentences, who claimed that people were eating dogs and cats in Springfield even after THE FREAKING MAYOR OF SPRINGFIELD AND GOVERNOR OF OHIO TOLD HIM TO CUT THAT ISH OUT AND THE PROUD BOYS SHOWED UP, who claims that he’ll raise money for things by imposing tariffs on China… despite the fact that THE IMPORTER IS THE THE ONE PAYING THE TARIFF AND PASSING IT ONTO THE CONSUMER INSTEAD OF THE COUNTRY IN QUESTION (was I the only one paying attention in Economics in high school???), who is imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico despite us getting a lot of our imports of food and other things from them, who doesn’t know the origin of the word “grocery” (Google is free, y’all!), who is claiming that there will be mass deportations even though he doesn’t actually have any clue of how to do that or how much he is going to hamstring agriculture or building in this country by doing that (because migrant workers are the ones who actually *DO* those jobs), who incited an insurrection which killed several people, and who, along with his derpy followers, has no idea how basic things in the economy work. His Cabinet choices are the dumbest people imaginable for each position (like they were in his first administration) to the point that even his followers are objecting to them. (Seriously? Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? Well, he is a pedophile like Trump…)

I’m positively dreading the next four years as a member of a church with members who could possibly deported because our immigration system is effed up in so many ways, I’m a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, someone who is neurodivergent with chronic conditions, and someone who had a pregnancy condition. I’m struggling to keep my head up already, and the Orange Idiot taking offices means that I’m going to have to fight twice as hard to keep things working for me and Daniel when I barely have the mental and emotionally energy to get out of bed.

And yes, you can absolutely unfollow me if you’re offended by anything that I’ve just said. I’ve never forced anyone to read this blog.

I guess I should go look on BestBuy.Com for a new laptop before the Mango Mussolini hostilely takes over the Oval Office again and prices jump 25% because he is incapable of understanding the purpose of tariffs…

Oh yeah, my saint for 2025 is St. Gianna and the word of the year is “hello”.

I’ll be putting my new bullet journal together if you need me…

Turning Down the Heat

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From the blog of my Episcopal priest Fr. Paul:

I just cranked the heat up in my office today. Outside it’s in the low 50’s and I was chilly. Then I signed into my computer and checked the news. All of a sudden, the room felt hot.

This is the last week before the election, and polls show a wildly varied scenario of potential outcomes. Everybody is anxious. This is par for the course. This time around, however, there is a real threat of violence. There are people who believe that if their candidate does not win the election, violence to put them in the White House by force would be justified. Vulnerable people will be targeted. I am opening up my church as a sanctuary.

My Christian faith teaches me that the world is saved by dying, not by fighting, by serving, not by forcing, by giving rather than taking, and by loving rather than hating.

Dear fellow human beings, it’s high time to turn down the heat!