If this does not tell you all you need to know about Fox News and truth and integrity and ethics, there is just no hope for you at all. Anything for ratings. That is not news. That is propaganda and entertainment. For shame. Not promoting this book, just the title. 🙂
medicine today is about your health, think again.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/02/11/1154962356/ers-hiring-fewer-doctors
Republicans are despicable. Social Security is your money, taken from your wages and your family’s wages, and your friend’s wages.
https://www.newsweek.com/list-republicans-suggested-cutting-medicare-social-security-1779917
I started to watch it and I just couldn’t continue. This is a traffic stop. A traffic stop. And they came at him furious, like he was a mass murderer they had been chasing forever and were in fear for their lives in case he was still armed. But it was a traffic stop. Routine, right? Why on earth were they so angry? Why were they so violent? Did they know who was in that car and targeted him on purpose? I don’t understand where their attitude came from, or why. That could have been me, or you, or your child, your husband, your brother. What on earth is going on in my country? This is extremely scary, because there seems to be absolutely no reason or justification for their behavior, except that they could. They could do that to another human being because they are ‘cops’. Who up until now seemed to never be held to account for the horrific things they do. I hope they get every book it is possible to throw, thrown at them and they spend miserable, horrible, unpleasant, painful rest of their lives in prison. My god.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/us/tyre-nichols-memphis-friday/index.html
bathrobes for women. An article on Lifesavvy. This, and remember, these are the five BEST bathrobes for women:
Where have I been? I have no idea. Been a weird kind of month. Had a couple of really good days before I had to decrease the prednisone, but it’s been downhill ever since. That Getting Things Done was great while it lasted, but it didn’t last very long, unfortunately, and I am back to hobbling around and lots of pain and bah. Also, humbug. Anyway, just saw an article about how science doesn’t really know what has caused the rise in obesity since the 80’s. Well, taking prednisone is one thing, I can definitely vouch for that. But maybe it’s all the sugar that’s been added to foods that would not normally have sugar in them. Sugar is addictive, adding it to everything means you eat more and buy more because money is the only thing that matters. It could also be the fact that there are zillions of chemicals in everything we eat now, chemicals our bodies were not designed to process. But hey, let’s just pretend we don’t know what the reason is, right? So over humanity. So over us.
It is a bright, sunshiny day. Warming up. Oh, Mother Nature, I am missing real winter. But it’s the new world, right? Having a good day so far. Up at 8! A.M! In the morning! I know. Made a cooked breakfast. Yes, I cooked. Guess I am getting better, slowly. I baked Birds Eye frozen potato thing, with potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots, which I usually just eat on it’s own. But I saute the leftovers in a bit of butter and scramble in two eggs the next day, so I just did that for breakfast instead of waiting. Tasty, pretty easy, and filling. Add pepper and you’re good to go. I put pepper on just about everything. Great on cantaloupe. AND I made perked coffee. Woo Hoo!
Yesterday started badly. Found out my rent is going to increase dramatically in March, after going up twice this year already. Turns out its not the landlord, except for March, as he can only raise it once a year. It’s Housing. They refigure the number (Did I get more income and no one told me? NO.), so what they base it on I have no idea. But they are sending me a moving packet so I can maybe look for another place, although my caseworker said all the landlords are raising the rents hundreds of dollars, which is their right. Housing will only pay so much, and any extra is on me. I have been homeless before and lived with friends for several months. Really do not want to go through that again. Especially now, when I am so not well. But you play the hand you’re dealt, is my take, and I make the best of it if I can. Other fun things from yesterday: It’s been two weeks and no plumber. There is a steady stream of cold water running in the bathtub, and I am draining the rivers dry, I think. My homemaker came back from the laundromat claiming I did not have enough money in the coin purse for the machines. Yes, I do. I counted it and put in the the bag right before you came. Well, only about half was in the bag. OMG, I have finally lost my mind, thinks I. Turns out the bag was unzipped and upside down in her pocket and there was the money. Sheesh! Then Gertrude jumped on the printer and the thing made that weird noise that connecting your computer to the internet used to make, and jammed itself sideways. Thank you so much, Miss G. I was able to unjam it, unlike my other printer, which she messed up so badly that I cannot figure out how to make it work. Cute kitty is cute, and it’s a good thing or she might wind up stuffed. Not really, but sometimes……….
Tomorrow is the ultrasound. Really curious to see what, if anything, they find. Hoping I don’t need the biopsies later, as it’s one more hassle and one more thing I have to ask my friend to take me to and wait around for. I am so over that. I keep thinking that next time will be the one too many and I will lose a friend. She says not, but it’s happened before when it wasn’t actually my fault. I was NOT being needy, but friend perceived it as such and just cut me right out of her life without a word of explanation. Anyway. Long sorted and over.
So hoping to get better enough to sort out my disaster of an apartment. Too much stuff. Where did it come from? It’s not like I’m buying new things or anything. I think it’s like paperwork. It reproduces as you are sleeping.
I can tell I’m better, because I am very wordy today, which if I am NOT better, does not happen. So yay. Opened the bedroom door after a week or so due to it freezing in there, and Miss G is delirious. She keeps coming out, and then running back in. Weird cat really is. Weird. Had to unplug the fireplace because I inadvertently unplugged it when trying to unplug my firestick, and the plug was HOT and scorched. So an unplugging mistake saved me from a fire, which would no doubt have happened sooner or later. Whew! So I am heating the place with my little heater fan. I am going to go bankrupt from an electric bill, no doubt. Ah, well. I have asked a few times now over a few years for someone to please come and clean the ducts and change the filters, as it’s been maybe ten years or more for the ducts, and a couple years before the pandemic for the filters. Maintenance. Do you want your building to burn down, Mr. Landlord? This is why I am getting a moving packet from housing. Along with the upstairs neighbors who seem to be over fond of moving furniture for a few hours after 2am almost nightly. Remember houses? I used to live in one. Detached, too, not stuck onto another one. Neither of these are the ones. 🙂
Have a great day, everyone, and wear your masks. Please.
So I am watching episode one on Paramount +. I remember watching this show ages ago. Anyway, Allison is being tested by the Texas Rangers, and first her plane is met with maybe ten cars, and every place they go Allison and the person testing her are accompanied by a dozen or more Rangers. Why? They start right off with stupid. Seriously. The Texas Rangers don’t have anything better to do than follow around one of themselves and a woman who is not under arrest or anything? Are there no crimes outstanding in Texas that day? What? I mean seriously. I watched the first Episode of JAG, which show I have not watched before, and OMG. TV was really, really bad back then. Really bad. It’s really, really bad now, but in a completely different way. Good grief.
Happy Solstice, everyone. Yes, I know it was actually the other day, but celebrate the season. Today is the first day of winter based on temperature. Anyway, I read an article about how people get offended if you say ‘Happy Holidays’, like Christmas is not a holiday, so Solstice it is. Why is wishing people good will a bad thing, however you say it? I am so over humanity. The stupid runs strong with these ones.
to what is wrong with us, I think, a quote from the New York Times article by Margaret Renkl: “Media and political figures alike profit when we are angry or afraid.” This also makes it much easier to divide and conquer, which is exactly what they are doing, in case you haven’t noticed. “The meaning of DIVIDE AND CONQUER is to make a group of people disagree and fight with one another so that they will not join together against one.”
On the bright side, today is the Solstice. The ORIGINAL mid-winter celebration. The days will slowly begin to lengthen now, as we are ‘marching towards spring’, a quote from something I read a long time ago but have forgotten.
Also, could somebody cook this for me and deliver it, please.
We got a new maintenance manager. I heard a drip in the bathroom, and a couple of hours later my favorite Neil the plumber came. Drip had stopped, but he fixed shower drip, toilet (did not know it needed fixing) and bought and installed a new garbage disposal. Woo Hoo. Happy Jean is happy.
So today, the maintenance manager called to see how it went. We had a lovely convo, and I mentioned that my kitchen lights have not worked in a few years, and no once has changed the central air filter since way before the pandemic, and no one has cleaned the system for several years before that. Which is why I am using my electric fire place and a space heater instead of the central heating. Fire hazard, I’m told. So she is looking into both items. If no one has cleaned my system, I can imagine no one has cleaned any others in the building either. Some landlords are more on top of things than others. The first few years I lived here, people came and did these things twice yearly. But the building has been sold several times since and all the maintenance sort of fell by the wayside.
Anyway, I am happy things are finally going to get done. I hope.
My high dose prednisone, which I thought was going to make me better, only did for one really good day, then back to the miseries. I do have an official diagnosis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and the issue in my head could be temporal arteritis, which goes along with that, so I am having an ultrasound soon and then possibly biopsies depending on what the ultrasound show. It just never ends, but hey, you just have to play the hand your dealt and get on with it the best you can. And basically, I have a very good life, so can’t really complain (too much, whiny Jean does get whiny sometimes).
It is raining, raining, raining for the second time in a couple of weeks. This should be snow, Mother Nature. It is December. Global warming at work. Bah.
I got free Grubhub with Prime, and I ordered in KFC. Have not had KFC in years and years. What can I say about it? The coleslaw is good. Oh, well.
Yes, I have totes lost my marbles. LOL Saw the rheumatologist yesterday, and yes I officially have Polymalgia Rheumatica, an inflammatory disease and am now on another course of high-dose prednisone. Prednisone is a very bad drug, but it is also a very good drug and I am hopeful that in a few days I will be a functioning human being again. I am also going to have biopsies to see if the problem that has been ongoing in my head for several years now is Temporal Arteritis. I had the tests way back when I first got sick, before they settled on fibromyalgia as a diagnosis, and I did not have TA then. But it is looking pretty likely now. My vision has been getting worse almost daily, and TA causes blindness if left untreated, so thank you very much for nothing, past doctors.
I cannot stress how important it is to find a good doctor. Or how hard. But after years of telling various doctors that ‘something is wrong in my head’, and being dismissed or given another pill, I finally have three doctors who actually care what is happening to me and are trying to do something about it. All are female by the way, but the worst doctor I have had in my entire life was also female, so that isn’t a good criteria to go by. But finally, I am feeling hopeful, and thinking of all the things I want to do and get done when I am a real human being again. For however long that lasts. BTW, looking for an image of a good doctor, I got an entire page of pictures of The Good Doctor, the tv show. Not the same thing, Duck Duck Go.
Also, I dumped Twitter. It was hard, but if I keep using it, that means I am supporting that disgusting excuse for a human being, Elon Musk, who supports that even more disgusting excuse for a human being, the Orange Disgrace, and if you don’t know who that is, where on earth have you been? It’s hard to follow your conscience, and in some countries doing that can mean prison or death, which makes it even more important to do it here in the US. Embrace the freedom we have to disagree, and to speak up. Those Fascists, and all the Republicans who either are fascists or support them, want us to live like those other countries. Want us to be jailed or murdered for speaking out. Want us to live like a third-world country under a fascist dictator. Why? What is wrong with us? Mass insanity caused by too much sugar in every single food we eat that isn’t a raw ingredient that we have cooked ourselves? (And that’s a whole nother issue, btw.) I don’t know, and I don’t know what to do about it, but it gets harder every day to see what is going on in this country, to take in that this is my fellow citizens doing these things, and supporting those who are doing these things, and it is very, very scary.
But, I am now going to get better, I think, so it’s all looking up, just a bit.
I have been thinking and thinking about dumping it, but there are some people I follow who I would really miss. BUT, I guess I have to follow what I stand for, which is apparently nothing Musk and his ilk stand for, and say goodbye. This is going to hurt.
But no snow. It is cold, though. 38 degrees. Brrrr.
I am feeling rather discombobulated, like I cannot think clearly. Trying to do a grocery order and oh, my. I managed in the end, but it took awhile. My local Stop&Shop has NO half and half, no light cream. What the heck? Did the milk truck lose a wheel, or the horse just decided not to go anywhere today? What?
Am wishing I could put up some Christmas decorations, but the last time I did was the Christmas before Gertrude, 2018. The next year Miss Destructo was running rampant, pulling everything off the walls, knocking everything off of every surface. She is a bit better this year, but I do not trust her AT ALL. Good thing she’s cute.
Watching the squirrels on a vid I found for cats. This lasted 0.2 seconds or so (little Torchwood reference there). That’s her most favorite thing ever, the tunnel. She hides in it. That’s her rug and toy basket, too. Cat is better off than I am.
Nobody tell her that her butt sticks out, okay? Happy December, everyone.
From the NYTIMES:
As billions in government subsidies were at stake, the electric utility industry shed its opposition to clean-air regulation and put its lobbying muscle behind passing President Biden’s climate bill.
Which proves the point that money is the only thing that matters in this country. An example: I just discovered that my health subsidy plan covers copays, which I have been paying a lot of this year, 50 dollars every time. Those who have charged me are supposed to know this, and the subsidy payment should be automatic, but now I have to call everyone I have paid and tell them this and ask to be reimbursed, which the person I talked to said they may refuse to do. This is doctor’s offices. So my medicare advantage plan seems to be getting double payment if the subsidy is actual paying them, too. I am not irate Not even. I did not go to the recommended physical therapy session because they are a 40 dollar copay each time and come on, people. I am running up my credit card debt at the speed of light.
On the other hand, my new doctor is literally the best doctor I have ever had. She is like a physician/therapist in one person. Yesterday she recommended a book which I think explains how stress and unresolved issues from the past can cause pain in certain areas of the body. Like the left side of my head, which I have had x-rays and cat scans and there is nothing there to cause the pain I have.
I am applying for help paying for phone and internet. The government has a program for that. Go ahead, vote Republican, ruin it for those of us who have working brains and common sense. Anyway, my brain, which was in top form yesterday, cannot cope with the digital paperwork today. Oh, well.
So weird life is weird. In general, my body is not working at all well, but overall, I am feeling better mentally than I have in years. Ta Da. That is all.
Here’s a headline:
| Alyssa Milano blasted by conservatives, Elon Musk after trading in Tesla for Volkswagen: ‘Founded by Nazis’ |
Aren’t conservatives members of the party that is so very obviously pro-Nazi. Hypocrites all.
There is so much about this day that most of us were unaware of, growing up, and I did a search and came up with some disturbing facts, but right now, I just want to eat my turkey dinner ready-meal from Shaw’s, and enjoy the sunshiny day. There’s a pretty good article on Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/maiahoskin/2022/11/24/the-real-history-behind-thanksgiving/ if you’re interested. Hope it’s a good day for all who celebrate, and not too distressing for the rest of us.
was a good day. I got to go out.
Took an Aleve. First time since before bleed, since was told that might have been a contributing factor. So far all good. Tess put a towel on the car seat, just in case, though. She is so weird. LOL
I will say that nothing went well. NOTHING. First to the bank to replace my card because the chip quit working. Since I don’t have a driver’s license or picture ID that isn’t 20 years old, the bank person had to go through hoops to get me the new card, which took a lot longer than you’d think, but she very kindly was determined to get me a new card. Which works. So thank you bank lady. I have a great bank anyway. It’s a local bank, and is much better and nicer and less expensive for things than the big banks I dealt with in the past. So yay.
Then we went to Joanne’s. Again issues with this, issues with that, everything took ten times as long as needed. But in the end I got a Butterfinger, cause by then I was starving. Also, Joanne’s is ridiculously over-priced, even more than it used to be.
Then we went to Target to return the disaster of a laptop I bought last week. Did not have the right number for the return, but the guy was able to use my credit card to get the refund anyway, so it did work out. By now, I can barely walk even hanging off the shopping cart, but it was fun. Got a couple things I needed there, too, so that was good.
THEN we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond cause the saleswoman at Target said they had much better neck massagers there and I really wanted to get one since my neck and shoulders have been causing me some serious pain since this whole health debacle started in August. Got a new checker, I did warn him it wasn’t going to go well, which it didn’t, but got everything in the end. And I made him laugh, which is always an excellent thing.
Next was stop off at Dunkin’s, cause starving Jean was not going to have enough energy to do any food prep. Got a sourdough breakfast sandwich, which isn’t horrible. Not saying it’s good, rather tasteless, but not horrible (inedible). And no issues there. So home at last, totally exhausted, but happy. Happy Jean is happy. We unboxed the neck thing, which kind of drapes over your shoulders and goes up your neck and is like a heavy-ish really soft vest. It plugs in. Cannot wait to use it.
So good day. Good friend to put up with slow, whiny, miserable, ever-so-slightly insane Jean who was laughing hysterically through a lot of this. I am very lucky in my friends. And Gertrude was happy to see us back and quite enjoyed sniffing every single thing I bought.
Oh, also, in between bright sun here and there, we had a very brief spate of sleet. Little round knobs of snow. It was so cool. No pun intended. LOL Winter!!! It’s a good thing.
Crap. I have been having a very not good time for some time, and I have seen the doctor, the rheumatologist, the neurologist, am having a cat scan and x-rays and I can’t think, I can barely walk some times or stand and anything more than feeding the cat and scooping the litter box and stuffing something in the microwave seems to be beyond me. So I am in a foul, foul mood. Sorry about that.
So there’s a fun article from the New York Times, but you probably need a subscription to read it, so I’ll summarize. 1. We Are Screwed. 2. We Are The Ones Who Screwed Us.
They have been telling us for decades, literal decades what was going to happen if we didn’t change the way we do things, but we decided the current profit mattered more than future survivability for us and more so, for our children. God, I hate humanity.
Sorry. I will be bright and cheery again someday. I hope. Not looking good right now, though.
strangely peculiar 