end of life, pet edition

 We have three dogs. All of them are elderly. We have a min-pin, a Jack Russel, and a mutt. The mutt is chronologically the youngest but he is also the largest so he's also the oldest physically. We love all three of them. Jack, the min-pin, is the oldest at 16, Roscoe, the JRT, is 15, and Rocky, our lovable mutt is 14. All of them are on some sort of medication.

Rocky has significant arthritis and kidney disease. He is on a plethora of pain medication for arthritis and a special diet and medication for kidney disease. He's become incontinent of stool at times. I found through research this is common with advanced arthritis. He falls and has trouble laying down and standing up. He drags one of his hind legs when he walks. He's restless and he whines more and more often. It's very close, if not overdue, to let him rest. 

I didn't share yet, we are a blended family, Jack and Rocky are my husband's from before he met me, Roscoe is mine from before we met. I can't make end of life decisions for Rocky or Jack. Well, technically I could but I won't. My husband has to make those decisions. I've told him how he is during the day. I've told him how much constant pain he is in. I've cried. I've watched my husband cry with Rocky. My heart breaks every day for Rocky. 

I've discussed Rocky's condition with our wonderful veterinarian, Dr. Daniels. Her philosophy is that dogs should be able to dog and when they can no longer act as a dog it is our responsibility to let them go.

I've shared this with my husband. He's working through the grief of knowing he has to make that choice sooner rather than later. Rocky has good days but he always drags his foot. He always struggles to lay down or get back up. He still wants to dog. Right now good days still outnumber bad days. When the balance shifts it will be time.

I'm sad for Rocky and our little pack of dogs, and us. I won't feel sad for Rocky when he is set free to cross the rainbow bridge where all good dogs go. I will be happy for him on that day.

Love your fur babies. They are given us to love for such a short time. We don't deserve them. Try and act like we do.

sex education

 Some time in the mid-80's, the high school lunch room. I'm with my small circle of friends. Us girls are talking about sex, because...high school girls. Someone said something about staying a virgin because she was afraid to get pregnant. Followed up by worrying about what to eat so she wouldn't hurt a baby. What happens if my cheeseburger bonks it on the head? she asks in all seriousness. Someone else mentioned that you can't get pregnant the first time.

I was appalled. Both statements were ludicrous. I proceeded to hold an impromptu sex education class during lunch. I explained anatomy using appropriate medical terminology for body parts for male and female. I think I might have drawn a picture of a uterus and fallopian tubes on a napkin. I explained how sex worked, how pregnancy worked, and that no Virginia, your cheeseburger will not "bonk" a baby on its head. I explained that you can get pregnant any time you have sex, including the first time. The girls at my table asked how I knew all of this.

Let me reiterate: this was high school. Not middle school, not grade school. High school. We were all at least 14 years old. All of us had started our periods. None of this should have been new information.

I was lucky. My parents decided when I was young that I would have honest, accurate information. Every question I asked was always answered as a very young child. The answers were honest and factual while being age-appropriate. As my mother said often, if you are old enough to ask you are old enough to to be given an answer. So I was prepared when I started my period at 11. I wasn't frightened. I knew what it probably was so instead of panicking, I talked to my mom. Her talks with me got much more frank and detailed at that point. We talked about birth control and sex and how she thought I was too young but if I ever felt like it was time to use protection and come to her to get birth control. At 11 my response was to remind her I still played with dolls, I'm definitely too young for sex. She was relieved but likely not surprised.

My school system gave the first sex ed talk in 5th grade, girls and boys were separated. You needed parental consent. My dad asked me to just sit quietly and not ask questions. Looking back I probably understood better than my teacher and/or anything I asked would result in a call from the school and yet another parent-teacher conference. I did as asked. we watched some after school special type movie about pads and body hair and that was that. I never found out what boys were taught. In high school health class we got a little more anatomy and briefly touched on reproduction and that was that. We may have been sex-segregated again, I'm not sure. It was the 80's, they touched on AIDS/ARC, remember ARC? ARC was HIV before it was called HIV. By then I'd learned to keep my mouth shut to get along. School sucks but that's a different blog post.

This year Moms for Liberty (hard eye roll on that name) is challenging the sex ed provided in local high schools because they should be teaching abstinence and not birth control or STI prevention. Um, remember HIV/AIDS? How about syphilis, chlamydia, herpes? Oh, abstinence, right, because that's always been effective (hard eye roll). I am appalled, just as I was in high school when I held an impromptu sex ed class over lunch. 

I thought we would move beyond puritanical hold-overs by now. I thought we would be more comfortable educating children and young adults on their bodies and the bodies of the opposite sex by now. I honestly thought that STIs and pregnancy would trump abstinence only education by now.  I hope the children of Moms for Liberty (hard eye roll on that name) meet someone whose parents chose factual, accurate information over storks and cabbages who will hold an impromptu sex ed class over lunch.

Mid terms

 The red wave didn't happen across the US. It happened in Florida. I'm disappointed with Florida but not surprised. 

In every state with abortion on the ballot women won. We retain the right to full personhood. 

Republicans are trying to figure out why they didn't sweep federal elections. I think they know but won't say it out loud. People across this nation recognize abortion as a medical decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not something to ban with narrow exceptions.  People will likely feel the same about same sex marriage and other trans and gay rights. 

If Republicans are savvy they will back off the Christian Nationalism and the morality oversight into people's personal lives. If a single Republican had come out loudly in favor of abortion rights and reproductive healthcare they would have had my vote. None did. When Roe was overturned I was going to focus on my state elections when it came to reproductive rights and focus on fiscal measures federally. The SCOTUS opinion on Dobbs was that abortion access is a state issue, then McConnell brought a bill to ban all abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for life of mother to the floor. I refocused all my attention to abortion access.

What I saw is that voters are still evenly divided politically but only because the majority of candidates are far left or far right. People crave fiscal conservatism and personal liberty. Neither side offered both. What I saw and what I heard is that most people were voting against instead of for. Until both sides get that the citizens of the US will be stuck in this weird political stalemate.

This election cycle I voted against. I voted against anti-choice. I voted against Christian Nationalism. I voted against criminalizing people for existing. I voted against right wing propagandist teaching of history. I voted against removing books from school libraries. I voted against discrimination. My voice counts, even if the candidate whose box I checked didn't win. I will write letters to those who won. Even with Florida becoming red, Republicans have a responsibility to understand their constituents' will. There is a very small will to discriminate. There is little will to prevent women from seeking safe abortion. The still-divided elections results demonstrate that. The failure of a red wave demonstrates that. 

days before the midterms, GNO edition

 I had a fun Girls' Night Out dinner with friends last night. We kept away from politics for most of the evening. We all have different opinions on what is best for our country and unlike the MSM would have us believe, we respect each other enough to have those opinions. At the end of the evening three of us were left. Somehow we got on our mail in ballots. Mine and one other already sent them in. The other is still debating a couple choices. I let them know that for the first time I voted a straight party ticket. They know because....I have a big, loud, opinionated mouth that I am pro-choice and always have been. Guess which way I voted. 

One tells me she doesn't believe the Democrats will do anything to protect women. Here's the thing...I agree with her and told her so. I followed that up with telling her that I DO believe the Republicans and that is my issue. 

This morning I woke up and refined my thoughts. I believe the Republicans will do everything in their power to enact anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ+, restrictive voting, anti-social net programs legislation. I believe them because they already have or already tried to do these things. I do not believe they will fix the border issues, fix the economy, change tax codes to favor workers, fix healthcare, and on and on. I don't believe those promises because they haven't done it yet. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

I don't believe the Democrats will do anything for anyone. They've never proved me wrong on that yet. They haven't fixed the border, the economy, social net programs, or voting.  When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

I'm tired of politicians and candidates who live and campaign on the extremes. Where are candidates who can say things like access to healthcare should be universal, a single payer system has costs, lets work on a variety of solutions. Unrestricted border crossings pose immediate threat to union sovereignty on multiple levels, lets work on making legal crossing faster and more efficient in processing out criminals, drug dealers, and speeding up legal immigration for those who want to be here. World leaders including the US plunged the world into inevitable inflation and recession in an effort to contain a pathogen, lets work on ways to resolve that among world leaders. Where are those candidates? Out-funded by crazy extremists on both sides. I'm disgusted.

In short, I voted straight democrat ticket this year because I believe Republican extremism and not their decades-long rhetoric about fixing bigger issues.

scattered

 Today doesn't seem to be a good day for concentration. I want to write a cogent post but can't wrap my head around a topic. I want to develop this blog but can't concentrate long enough to learn how to develop the look and navigation. 

My mind is elsewhere. Every single elsewhere. I'm thinking about my mom and her health and healthcare through the journey of dementia. I'm thinking of my husband and how we can improve our relationship and communication. I'm thinking of the monarch caterpillars on my single, lonely milkweed plant in the backyard and how to see them safely through pupa and emerging as a beautiful butterfly. I'm thinking of my elderly dogs and how to keep them as healthy and pain-free as possible. I'm thinking of the house and laundry that needs done. I'm thinking of my half-hearted job search and, at 50, what I want to be when I grow up.

I started this blog as a personal journal of sorts, one that I could share with the world if and when I chose to. One week in and I'm glad that so far no random stranger has stumbled across any of these posts. Maybe I should create separate pages, maybe I should just let everything be stream of consciousness, maybe I should delete the whole thing and start over when I feel motivated.

Oh, wait, motivation comes from doing, not the other way around. 

Well, I am writing, even if it isn't high literature. I'm doing, keeping my promise to myself that I would write something at least once a week and whenever the mood strikes. 

On that note, I'm going to take a short walk and check out some of my other plants.

Thoughts on perinatal hospice

 I just read an opinion article written by a physician. He discusses pregnancies with identified congenital anomalies not compatible with life and that current standard of care is to offer abortion (where currently allowed by law). His position is that women carrying fetuses with identified anomalies be offered peri-natal hospice care and carry the pregnancy to term. I agree whole-heartedly that this should be an option offered to the woman and her partner if appropriate. I am pro-choice, not pro-abortion. Some, maybe many, women would make the choice to carry to term or at least to natural delivery. Perinatal hospice could provide physical, mental, and spiritual interventions to assist with a natural transition after delivery from a baby's life to their death. Many parents would find a great deal of comfort and peace with this approach. Not every parent would feel the same though. What about those women for whom living and waiting through a pregnancy that will ultimately end in a dead child would be devastating? Perhaps we, the healthcare establishment, could offer post-abortion elective hospice grief care and counselling. What if, and I'm just throwing this out there, we offered a full range of options, termination without hospice after-care, termination with hospice after-care, no termination without hospice after-care, no termination with hospice after-care. Here's the thing, women are capable of deciding what is best for them and their pregnancies under whatever circumstances they live. 

My concern and rage over the Dobbs decision has less to do with abortion access and far more to do with government intrusion into the life of a population they do not know and do not care about as demonstrated by the decades-long record of cutting social service benefits while continuously raising the budget for the military-industrial complex. At the rate we are going in 20 years we will have an abundance of prison inmates and/or cannon fodder, not the elevation of society envisioned by the religious right.

Circling back to the opinion piece I read today, I think the good doctor has a good idea and I hope it comes from a place of caring. I think perinatal hospice is a fantastic intervention that should be added to the standard of care. I do not think it should be the only option.

Day One

 I’ve had ideas on creating a blog of some sort for a while. Life kept getting in the way. Now that I created this spot I have to figure out what to do with it. Honestly, I have no idea. I was inspired to finally do this when I made a Linkedin post about my recent job resignation and the months of unemployment. My brother liked the post and called me to make sure I was okay and to tell me he wished I had gone into writing of some kind. I’ve always had ideas for novels, even started some basic plot outlines but, again, life gets in the way. 

After talking to my brother I realized I still want to write but maybe not novels. Right now I want to write opinion pieces on current events, books, videos and anything that captures my attention. I also want to write my experiences of the last few months and reflections on the past.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, my musings will reveal an underlying theme. Maybe someone will be interested in my thoughts. If not, I will still enjoy the journey,