I didn’t think I would have to write this so soon. My cat Inca, my loving companion of 17 years, was dead on the floor when I got up the other morning.
I suppose she was lucky. She was rarely sick, and never seriously ill. She was still lithe and active, her fur thick and glossy. She attacked her evening treat last night with her usual impatient greed. She never suffered as some of my other pets have, with pain and illness. She didn’t have to be put down by the vet—a procedure that would have terrified her, as she was a very shy and nervous girl. Instead, she passed away, apparently in her sleep, with her people there, though we knew nothing about it until the morning. I guess I would be happy to go the same way.
But there is a painful, Inca-shaped hole inside me right now. So let me tell you about Inca.
I got Inca right after my beautiful cat Phoenix died of cancer (actually of vet, but the end was very near). I was heartbroken, but a friend said I should rescue another cat in Phoenix’s honor—he was sure it would make me feel better. (Incidentally, he was right.) I started looking at shelter cats and ran into an organization called 13th Street Cat Rescue in San Jose, CA. I asked about a black cat they had because the very first cat I remember was my brother’s black cat, Flinky, and he was a very sweet boy. The cat I asked about was taken, but they asked if I was interested in adopting a black cat, because people are often highly superstitious about them, so black cats (and other melanistic pets) tend to sit on the shelf. The organization happened to have a nine-month-old black cat, part of a litter that had been rescued from a trailer park. The kittens had been too old for adoption, but the trailer park manager threatened to kill the whole lot if 13th Street didn’t take them.
Inca on her personal cat-warmer.
It turned out all the kittens, though feral, were adapting nicely to domestic life. Inky (as she was called then) was no exception. I met her at one of the volunteers’ houses, and she sat on my lap and purred. Inca was beautiful, black with bright yellow-green eyes. She always had a few scattered white hairs among the black. In the sunlight, her fur looked chocolate brown.
We agreed to adopt her. I’m afraid I could not have a black cat named Inky. First I tried naming her Flinky, after that first black kitty, but it never suited her. The name Inca just came out of the blue one day, and I loved it right off. It seemed to suit her elegance.
At the time, we had a wonderful dog named Gigi. Gigi was a German shepherd-Labrador mix, 75 pounds, and, though a sweet and gentle dog, she was obviously terrifying to a tiny black cat. We kept Inca sequestered in a bathroom for a week, then let her out into the house. We really didn’t see her for the next two weeks—just a flicker of black at the corner of the eye, like a bat.
Then one day I was sitting on the couch and Inca strolled calmly into the room and jumped into my lap. I petted her, delighted, and she purred. After a few minutes, Gigi entered the room and I braced for a cat freakout. Instead, Inca ran down the length of the couch toward Gigi, mewing loudly. Gigi came over, and they kissed each other. Somehow, without my ever observing it, Gigi made friends with this timorous wee beastie and convinced her she was in a safe place. Their friendship ended only when Gigi died. I have many photos of the two of them cuddling together.
After Gigi died, Inca became even more attached to her humans, especially my husband, Tom. She began to sit on his lap at night when he watched TV. She was never a playful cat. Once in a while she would bat a toy around for a few minutes, but that was the extent of it. She didn’t have cute habits or do funny things, But she was a powerful engine of love and cuddles, happy to be petted at any time of the day or night.
Inca was also the best-behaved cat I have ever had. She didn’t potty outside her box. She didn’t scratch the furniture. With the exception of one fern, she never touched an indoor plant (the fern survived). She was the opposite of picky about food, eating whatever I put in front of her. She didn’t destroy stuff. Once in a while, we did get cat gak, but hairballs are part of being a cat. She bit gently when she felt affectionate, but rarely scratched. She loved our grandchildren and was gentle with them.
Inca did not like her tummy to be touched. If her tummy was stroked, she did that cat thing, turning into a ball of needles. After Inca was introduced to civilization by Gigi, the two of them tended to go with me wherever I was in the house. One day, Gigi laid down for a good tummy-rub and I obliged her. I rubbed and rubbed, and Gigi moaned with happiness as Inca watched. When I stopped rubbing Gigi’s tummy, Inca flopped over and presented her tummy for a rub. She found that she enjoyed it and would often ask for a tummy rub in the years to come. I was very intrigued that she observed, learned, and experimented.
She even learned some tricks at an advanced age. As she aged, she was still active, but could no longer jump to the top of the bed like Superman in a single bound. I bought her some stairs so she could climb our bed without clawing her way up the sides, shredding the bedclothes and on one occasion, me (it was an accident, but still). She would look at me with those bright eyes, clearly planning to scramble up the side of the bed, and I started gesturing to the stairs and telling her “Go up the stairs.” She learned to do this on command and (mostly) stopped clawing her way up the sheets.
I was facing major surgery and worried that Inca would continue to treat my body as a nice place to stomp around in the evenings. I never could figure out why she sat calmly on Tom’s lap, but wanted to stomp around on me. I had to teach her not to stand on my body, which must have been confusing to her after so many years of doing so. But she did learn, and only ran over me once after the surgery—right over the incision, as it happened. But mostly, she remembered not to. I felt kind of bad about making her stay off me (though I welcomed her to cuddle by my side), especially now, knowing how little time she had left. I did stop many times throughout every day to pet and cuddle her; I wanted her to know that I loved her as much as ever.
Inca was still so beautiful and healthy at 17 years old that I was convinced she would last a couple of years more. Unlike other elderly cats I’ve had, she did not become skinny, her fur was still thick and shiny, and she was as enthusiastic about food, treats, and petting as ever.
When I found Inca’s body yesterday morning, she was already stiff and cold. I wrapped her in a clean towel, but her bowels and bladder did not void after death. She exited this life as she lived it—tidy, without making a fuss.
In my last post on the subject, I explained that I have been unable to move past a set-point weight. I have been at the same weight for almost two years, giver or take a few pounds
No one can continue to deprive themselves and do things they don’t want to do for two years in pursuit of an unattainable goal. it’s just not human nature. I confess there were weeks in which I decided that being fat wasn’t the worst fate in the world. Chocolate and red wine played a large factor in those weeks.
As I detailed earlier, I tried everything in the book to try to break past that stubborn set-point. I couldn’t believe that nothing was working. (I am still unwilling to do the 10-day vegetable cleanse.) So I decided to increase my cardio again and skip lunch, having a protein drink instead (I add a medium-sized banana to the smoothie for texture and ballast). I started doing six miles a day on the recumbent bike, with the intention of working up to ten.
Last week, I weighed myself, and I was five pounds over the set point. Today, I weighed myself, and I am five pounds UNDER the set point for the first time in who knows how long. I almost woke my husband up to tell him, but he was up late last night so I took pity on him.
Totally made my day. I am still grinning. Now I have to keep it going. My personal trainer (“Lord Taskmaster”) is pushing for weight training prior to doing the cardio because he swears it gets the weight off faster (and he is the personal trainer, so he probably knows more than me). So I’ve started doing that as well. He is also pushing for seven miles. All in good time, your Taskmastership.
It has been a long time since I last posted. With regard to my Big, Fat Weight-Loss Campaign, it’s because it got complicated.
I lost 55 pounds or so in one year. The next year, despite continuing to diet conscientiously and exercising regularly, I lost no weight at all.
None.
I made changes. I was using the Weight Watchers method. I switched to counting calories. I was exercising a few days a week. I upped it to six days a week, alternating cardio and weight training.
Nada.
I started taking protein supplements. My nails went from paper-like to strong and long, and my hair thickened as well.
Not another ounce came off.
I consulted a nutritionist who wanted me to go on a cleanse for 10 days eating nothing but protein and vegetables. This is intended to improve bile production and reduce blood sugar because she couldn’t find anything else impeding my weight loss. I bought her protein powder and supplements, but suddenly, I was scheduled for major surgery—a complete, reverse shoulder replacement. I decided to delay the cleanse, as the surgery was going to interfere in many ways with how my body was working and I didn’t want to play around with nutrition while I was in recovery.
The surgery went fine and I’m glad I did it even though the six weeks in a sling was tedious and uncomfortable. Still, the discomfort was far less (after the first week) than before. Prior to the surgery there were days when I was hurting so much I couldn’t leave the house. As I was lying on a gurney waiting for surgery, I was in so much pain I asked for pain-killers (I was unable to take any prior to getting to the hospital because I was following the surgeon’s orders about taking medication and water.) Bless the nurses. They got me pain-killers. I was grateful because I spent a long time on that gurney.
Then I spent six weeks doing nothing at all except watching television, reading, eating, and doing physical therapy. I couldn’t drive and I didn’t want to leave the house if I didn’t have to. After this slugfest I was sure I would gain weight, but I did not. I’m back to counting calories and just resumed cardio on a recumbent bike.
To be honest, I don’t want to do the cleanse if I can avoid it. I would have to fix all my meals separately from the rest of the family, and just protein and vegetables sounds…boring. I will still do it if I have to, but I am hoping that the surgery did a reset and my body will once more be open to shedding pounds.
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I had never heard of a total reverse shoulder replacement until I was told I needed one. It’s a technique they use when there is so much damage to the joint that a standard replacement won’t work as well. I have severe arthritis, which pretty much destroyed the humeral head (the “ball”) of the humerus (upper arm bone) and resulted in bone-on-bone action and bone spurs.
The procedure is to expose and dislocate the joint. The humeral head is sawn off and replaced with a titanium and plastic cup which is inserted into the humerus. A titanium ball is screwed into the shoulder blade. Thus, the structure of the joint is reversed. It’s kind of a brutal surgery, and I am DEEPLY grateful for anesthesia. The surgeons did an amazing job, and after the first week, I stopped taking opioids and used only Tylenol and CBD for the pain, which has diminished daily. I have good mobility for this stage of healing (because I do the physical therapy exercises religiously). I don’t think I will ever have the complete range of motion that my other shoulder has, but I’m OK with that—I’m no longer in agony. And at 74, I have no ambition to become a trapeze artist.
When life gets tough, I tend to disappear into books. I had a rather difficult childhood and adolescence, during which I consumed literally thousands of books. As a teenager, I attended a private girls’ boarding school. I wasn’t happy with it, but I think I recognized it was a better alternative to living at home with my father, who was going through a really destructive phase of rage-drinking. During the summers I lived at home and I developed a safety schedule. I would start reading as soon as I got up, around noon. By this time, my father was out of the house and at work. I read, sequestered in my room, until around 4:00 in the morning. The primal danger was dinner time. My father would be home and drinking, and I was expected to attend a sit-down dinner with the family and assist with chores. I managed to stay out of the line of fire for the most part—reading was the one thing my father did not like to interrupt.
I still read lots of books as an adult, but since the election in November, I’ve been doing about a book and a half per day—far less than my adolescent average of four books daily, but it’s literally all that is keeping me from insanity at this point. My drug of choice? Cozy mysteries. I think it’s partly that in murder mysteries, justice is served and the wrong is righted. This is exactly what is missing from real life right now.
The problem is that I have already read a huge number of cozy mysteries and I worked through much of my favorite authors’ work. Some are now dead, and I am not expecting much from them, but others—come ON, people, get working! G.M. Malliet, I am talking to you!
I started using Libby, the free library app for eBooks and audiobooks, and picked a few authors at random. I am overjoyed to share with you that I have discovered two authors entirely new to me that are highly binge-worthy. I am still working through their offerings and I am as happy as a pig in shit—as long as I keep reading and ignoring the world at large.
First, let’s talk about Elly Griffiths and her Ruth Galloway series. So far, I have read seven out of the seventeen books in the series. The stories are set in the north of England, in Norfolk, which makes a nice change from London, the Cotswolds, and Cornwall, which are favorite venues for murder mysteries. Ruth is a forensic archeologist who teaches at a fictional university. Because of her expertise, she is frequently called in by the local police to determine the age, gender, etc. of human remains. Ruth lives in a cottage on the Salt Marsh—another fictional location—an isolated, windswept, and bird-haunted area. Which is how Ruth likes it.
Ruth reminds me of Agatha Raisin. She isn’t like Agatha in any way other than being middle-aged, but she is an interesting and original character. She’s a bit overweight and usually prefers frumpy clothes because they are practical for digging. She’s introverted and likes her alone time out on the marshes. She’s passionate about her profession but wary of romance, although there is this one DCI who is special… One of her best friends is Cathbad the Druid. His real name is Michael Malone, but everyone calls him Cathbad, and often he turns up out of nowhere when most needed.
There is a touch of the supernatural that wends its way through these stories. It is done with a light hand and never spirals into ghost story territory. There is a tendency to use threats to children as the plot engine, but not every book is about children in danger. The sub-plots about who is sleeping with whom and who is the father of which little moppet create interesting complications that affect the main story. Who knew that Norfolk was such a hotbed of erotic passions?
Ruth is a likable protagonist because she feels real. She’s a introvert, but she cares deeply about people. She is far from perfect, but in relatable ways, like not wanting to go to a party or being annoyed with her boss. I’d love to have a glass of wine with Ruth and talk about bronze-age culture. Or murder.
The second author I discovered is Sujata Massey with her Perveen Mistry mystery series. (I love that the protagonist’s name is Mistry!) Perveen is a young Parsi (Zoroasterian) woman living in Bombay during the 1920s, while the British Raj still ruled India. Against many obstacles, Perveen has trained as a lawyer and works with her father, a well-known barrister. Under British law at the time, she could neither take her exams at Oxford, nor could she speak in court. She is allowed to work as a lawyer outside of the courts, writing contracts and so forth. Her one advantage is that she can deal directly with women in purdah for whom contact with men outside their family is forbidden. As Perveen is one of only two women lawyers in India at the time, there is a need for her services in that arena.
Perveen also must deal with the incredible complexity of the legal system in India in the 1920s. Different religious laws applied to Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Jews, and Christians, while British law held sway over all. Despite Perveen’s family’s wealth and standing, as a woman, there is much she is unable to do professionally without jeopardizing her own reputation or that of her family or her father’s law firm. Perveen herself has a backstory that makes her life even more complicated, as she believes she can never marry or have children of her own.
The complexity of her society is part of the fascination of these stories. The caste system, the strict delineations between ethnicities and religions, the low status of women, and the divide between British and “native” all contribute to the colorful and complex tapestry of these mysteries. The stories are richly atmospheric, allowing the reader to experience second-hand the heat, the smell of spices, the texture of saris, the sounds of monkeys and birds that the author conjures up from an India of the past.
Perveen is an appealing protagonist, but not because she is “bucking the system.” I get annoyed by historical fiction depicting women living in the past but with modern sensibilities around women’s rights and behavior. Perveen is no rebel. As an Oxford-trained lawyer, she is in a peculiar situation for a young Parsi woman, but she got there in a traditional manner: by marrying the wrong man. She is just trying to make the best she can of her life without causing further problems or scandal. Her intelligence allows her to devise unusual solutions to desperate problems.
If, like me, you need to dive into other worlds to escape the unpleasantness of this one, I highly recommend these two mystery series. (I also read a stand-alone mystery by Elly Griffiths, “The Stranger Diaries,” and could not put it down.) Here are the series book titles, in order:
Ruth Galloway Mysteries:
The Crossing Places
The Janus Stone
The House at Sea’s End
A Room Full of Bones
Ruth’s First Christmas Tree
A Dying Fall
The Outcast Dead
The Ghost Fields
The Woman in Blue
The Chalk Pit
The Dark Angel
The Stone Circle
The Lantern Men
The Man in Black
The Night Hawks
The Black Room
The Last Remains
Perveen Mistry Mysteries:
The Widows of Malabar Hill
The Satapur Moonstone
The Bombay Prince
The Mistress of Bhatia House
Ooops. Looks like I just ran out of Perveen Mistry books. Please, Ms. Massey—write more!
Political cartoon by Bramhall for the NewYork Daily News.
I don’t know what’s going to happen under the Fourth Reich any more than you do. The election hit me like the Acme Safe hit Wile E. Coyote, and I disappeared beneath the weight of it for a while. I needed to think, to process the horror that just happened. Although it was less a present horror than a realization of the nastiness to come.
My preference at this point is frankly to say fuck it and leave this country. I honestly have no hope for us. A citizenry that would elect a career criminal, a rapist, a profoundly stupid and uneducated man, and an obvious traitor does not seem to me like a good place to live, and I think Trump and his cronies are all too eager to prove that.
Unfortunately, my preferences are not the guiding factor here. I have a large, close, and loving family. I cannot leave them, and they are at this point unwilling to go. They point out that we don’t know what is going to happen. This is true, but I think I’m on solid ground by saying it will be bad. “Stay and fight!” say some. My issue with that is “How?” I have been fighting for liberal causes my entire adult life, only to find my efforts wasted in the face of a galactically stupid and uninformed electorate. Remember? You can’t fix stupid. You can thank the Republicans for dumbing down our educational system for the past 45 years or so.
After several weeks of mourning for a country that I guess never existed, I came to a few conclusions about how to get through this if I can’t leave. I don’t mean get through this intact—just survive the coming tide of chaotic evil. I would like to share my conclusions with you, and I invite you to share yours with me. This is a time when people who have a conscience, integrity, empathy, decency, and love need to stand together against those who do not.
For me, it comes down to protecting oneself and one’s family. I do not see that there is anything I can do to affect what will be happening on a national scale, or even a state level. I believe that ordinary families—not billionaire families, perish the thought!—will be facing certain threats in these areas:
Food safety and continuity of the food supply chain
Healthcare
Finances/cost of living
Disinformation/biased reporting
The country is now an oligarchy, fronted by a kakistocracy. An oligarchy is a government run by corporations. A kakistocracy is a government run by the worst of society. We have been living in an oligarchy for quite some time, thanks to the Republicans—remember Citizens United? Now the corporations will have even fewer boundaries, regulations, or limits on what they do. We already know what they do when the restraints are off:
Profiteer, raising prices unreasonably and unnecessarily in pursuit of ever-higher profits
Create shoddy products for higher prices—or sell you less for more
Create harmful products for which they will never be held accountable
Slash customer service
Cheat (remember Enron?)
That means that the rest of us will have more trouble making ends meet—and in some cases, even getting our basic needs met. If Trump does what he did the last time, he will endanger food safety by firing USDA agricultural inspectors, opening the gate to listeria, e. coli, salmonella, and a host of other food-borne diseases, most of them extremely dangerous. This in turn endangers the food supply chain. There will also apparently be tariffs on certain foreign goods, which means that the healthy and nutritious food we get from Mexico, for example—like avocados and mangos—will become exorbitantly expensive. Because tariffs don’t hurt the foreign seller—they hurt the U.S. buyer. Trump just can’t get that through his stupid pumpkin head.
Avoid Giving Huge Corporations Your Money
There’s only one way to resist: break your ties to the corporations to the extent you can. If you don’t buy their stuff, they can’t hurt you. Amazon would be a great place to start. My husband thinks that is ridiculous—Amazon does things right. They have great customer service. They have rapid delivery. They have good prices (sometimes). They have great variety. They keep track of everything for you. They are incredibly convenient.
And Amazon is a ginormous corporation that threatens every small business on the planet. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s owner, owns the Washington Post, which served us poorly over the past nine years and capitulated in advance of Trump’s victory by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate after the staff had prepared to announce Kamala Harris. He’s busy cozying up to the new regime as we speak. Do you really want to give him more money?
So I decided to cut Amazon out of my life unless there was really no other way to get what I wanted or needed. This has not been easy, but I am doing it in stages. I get ebooks and audiobooks now through an app called Chirp or through the free library app called Libby. I order other products directly from the manufacturers or non-Amazon suppliers. Is it more work? A bit, but worth it to be free of Amazon. It’s tough to get to 100%. I try to purchase products online directly from the manufacturer or other suppliers, but sometimes I can’t do this. Amazon is like a metastasized cancer. I recently ordered Christmas candles from the Petalura catalog. They arrived with my latest order from Amazon. They are listed in my Amazon purchases. More and more, we really don’t know with whom we are doing business.
Take the same approach to other things you buy. Shop at locally owned businesses as much as possible. Question your choices. I used to buy a lot of personal care items from the drug store or wherever without really thinking about it. I became allergic to a lot of random things and began to scrutinize the ingredients very carefully. A hand lotion from the drug store can have 25 ingredients or more, most of which are unpronounceable chemicals. I started making my own dry skin salve with just three ingredients. (It’s easy. It’s also cheap.) I make some of my own condiments instead of buying bottles at the grocery store. We cook whole foods from scratch (purchased at a locally owned market), and avoid processed foods, which are bad for you anyway. All the garbage that corporations pour into their products, or feed their agricultural animals, or include in their packaged foods is just plain bad for human beings. And the more of this stuff we consume, the sicker we get, and the healthier the corporations’ profit margins. This will not improve under the Fourth Reich, because this government will be about making the wealthy oligarchs even more wealthy. It’s definitely not about YOU.
The old refrain of “make do, re-use, repair, recycle” further protects us from corporate control. Making something last longer is good for your wallet. Get over the idea that everything has to be new and stylish—who told you it had to be new and stylish? Right—the corporations who thrive on our lust for the latest thing. Consider bartering things you don’t need for things you do. There are specialty barter groups aimed at moms, for instance, where mothers can trade clothes, baby equipment, and toys. You can find barter groups online—I can’t recommend any because I have just started looking into this myself. Also, consider passing along unused and unwanted possessions to others who want or need them. There are “freecycle” groups in every community.
“New to me” is just as much fun as “new.” I buy most of my clothes on eBay because I don’t care if the clothing is new as long as it is in good condition and looks good. I can get designer clothing inexpensively and support individual entrepreneurs instead of corporations.
When I suggested some of this on FaceBook, many thought I was saying “Hurt the corporations by not buying their products.” That is not what I am saying. I do not think the corporations will be harmed if you cut your spending, although I wish I could say otherwise. No, this is about protecting you and your family, not about going after the billionaires and their companies. The less you rely on giant, impersonal, and soon-to-be-unregulated corporations, the better.
Obviously, you can’t get to 100% on this. There are too many obstacles, obfuscations, and dependencies—unless you decide to go off-grid and live off the land.
Protect Yourself Against Disruptions to the Food Supply
If Trump again fires USDA inspectors or in some other way disrupts the safety of the food supply, we all need to make some choices. Consumption of meat, fowl, and fish may become more hazardous. It is possible to contaminate vegetables and fruits as well, but less likely, and vegetables and fruit can be washed. In the event of a serious threat to food safety, I intend to eat vegetarian food. I like it, it can be prepared in a million versatile ways, and it is generally speaking better for you.
There is another way to detach yourself from huge corporations—eat less processed food. Some processed food is fine—frozen vegetables, for instance. Freezing is just a good way to preserve food. But a lot of processed food has ridiculous amounts of added sodium, nitrates, sugar, preservatives, artificial dyes and chemicals, etc. As an examples, in a single-size package of Yoplait yogurt (6 ounces), there are 19 grams of sugar (nearly two-thirds of an ounce) and 90 ml of sodium. Yoplait, despite yogurt’s reputation as health food, is just junk. Say no to processed food to resist the oligarchy (and be healthier, too).
I am also in the process of collecting and storing staples for long-term storage such as flour, sugar, salt, pasta, canned goods, dry beans, water, etc. I’m not going nuts and gathering years’ worth of food—just enough to get by in the event of an emergency. It could be a waste of time and money. Or it might get this family through a bad patch—there’s no way of knowing right now.
Producing some of your own food gives you a bit of distance from the corporate control of what goes in your mouth. Apartment living makes this hard to do, but if you have a small amount of land available, you can at least produce some vegetables. We have a small vegetable garden, some fruit trees, and backyard chickens. That isn’t going to provide enough food to sustain a family for long, but it’s at least something we can do to be more independent.
Threats to Health Care
It’s impossible to say at this time what the specific threats are to our access to health care. Judging by Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d better hope there isn’t another pandemic because we know he doesn’t care if we live or die. Also of concern is his pick for head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK Jr. does not believe in vaccines. He has a history of making false statements and believes in debunked conspiracy theories on subjects like HIV and AIDS, antidepressants, and autism. If there were another pandemic would we have a militarized response to vaccine development—or would RFK block this? I don’t know. I doubt if RFK Jr. knows, frankly, and it makes me nervous.
The Kakistocrats want to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Also the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, or “Obamacare”). I guess I don’t have to say much more to indicate how this would devastate our population, especially seniors, the disabled, and the poor. Again, I have no idea how this will play out, nor do I have any bright ideas about how to protect yourself against this particular brand of idiocy. The best I have to offer, for those that can manage it, is seek medical and dental care in Mexico if our healthcare system goes south. The national healthcare system in Mexico is modern, well-developed, and affordable. Any town in Mexico with an American expat population will also have dentists and physicians that are competent and speak English. There are lists of towns with American expat populations online.
Misinformation/Biased Reporting
Misinformation is why we are in this position to begin with. The world has been flooded with lies, conspiracy theories, and fear-mongering, and apparently a fair number of people have lost their minds because of it.
Making the situation worse is that the mainstream media (MSM) in this country has abandoned its responsibility to report the truth and rolled over to appease its new master. Here are a few examples:
Trump sued ABC because George Stephanolpoulos stated that a jury found that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll. To lose this case, Trump would have had to prove actual malice, whereas Stephanopoulos had merely been reporting the facts. But ABC caved to placate Trump.
Time Magazine named Trump Person of the Year. I know they once named Hitler Person of the Year, but I guarantee you Trump saw this as homage to his greatness, not a burn.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of MSNBC’s flagship AM program “Morning Joe,” went down to Mooch-a-Lago to kiss the ring. I guess they forgot all about Trump’s attacks on them some years ago, when he accused Mika of “bleeding all over the place” from plastic surgery when she visited the Golden Palace.
And then there’s Bezos, showing his underbelly to the dictator and hoping that he won’t be kicked to the curb.
I can’t take the space to document all the MSM mentions of “he was joking” or downplaying some atrocity that Trump committed or intends to commit. Bottom line, our former bastion of free speech, the media, is suspect and can’t be trusted.
We certainly can’t trust social media, either. Anything we see on social media should be vetted and verified before it is passed along—but how do you verify it? Are there media out there that are unbiased and reporting the truth? I don’t know. National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast System (NPR and PBS) appear to still be providing actual news—although I have caught even them making statements that soften the reality of what Trump and the Republicans are doing. The MAGATs want to destroy these organizations by defunding them. What they don’t realize—because they know nothing about how this government works—is that NPR and PBS don’t have much government funding. So donate to these organizations to make up for the small amount of funding they will inevitably lose. And let’s hope they don’t join the MSM in pandering to the new regime.
Let me know if you have discovered more reliable, independent news sources by leaving a comment. Also, are any of the major newspapers in this country trustworthy? Boston Globe? Chicago Times? Christian Science Monitor? Anything? We may end up looking to English-language media from other countries to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.
What Do YOU Say?
I would be interested in your ideas for surviving the coming years under the oligarchic kakistocratic Fourth Reich. As I said, we must stick together and help one another out. As Ben Franklin once said, we hang together or we hang separately.
On the one hand, I have lost 55 pounds in about two years—45 of them during 2024. On the other hand, I have been stuck at the same number for about six months, and I can’t seem to move past it.
There are a few reasons for this. One reason is that my left knee decided to join my right knee by becoming incredibly painful. At times, I could walk only with the help of two canes. This meant that the exercise program came to a grinding halt. Off I went to the orthopedic surgeon to get shots of hyaluronic acid gel. Not much improvement, so the doc felt around a bit and determined I had a “Baker’s cyst.” This, it turns out, is very common in people with arthritis. It is a cyst that forms at the back of the knee, filled with synovial fluid. (Hyaluronic acid is a precursor to synovial fluid, but the cyst appeared prior to the injections.)
So the doc gave me a cortisone shot—and I immediately felt much worse, and took up both canes to walk again. So I spent probably two months or more sidelined from exercising. The knee gradually improved to the point where I started going to the gym again, but I decided to go to physical therapy to see if I could improve the situation a bit further.
The therapist thought the issue was not the Baker’s cyst (although it is definitely there), but an irritated meniscus. He gave me a simple leg-lifting exercise, and told me I would be way better in two weeks. He encouraged me to do the exercise as much as possible. I did a few reps the following day—and everything got worse. (I was spending a FORTUNE in CBD transdermal patches, by the way.) I reported this to the PT people, and during the next visit, I was assigned to another therapist, Kristie, whom I have worked with previously. Kristie determined that my knee was misaligned and I had probably been doing the leg lifts improperly. She gave me other exercises to do, and now, after about two weeks, I am almost pain-free!
Knowing that the knee is misaligned has been very helpful. For example, when I relax with my legs flat, either on my back in bed or sitting up in bed watching TV, my feet tend to rotate outwards significantly, especially my left foot, which shoves the knee out of kilter. I thought about this for a while and realized that for many, many years, I have allowed the weight of my bedcovers to force my feet outward because the pressure hurt my toes. So I bought a “blanket lifter” that keeps the bedclothes elevated over my feet—the relief is incredible. It also allows me to comfortably keep my feet—and ankles and knees and hips—in alignment. Zach, my trainer, suggested that my athletic shoes might be overly worn, and they were. I pronate badly (see misaligned feet), and the soles were badly worn on the outsides. So I bought new shoes. I am thrilled with my return to relative comfort and now I need to get back on the exercise trail in a more serious way.
I weighed myself and I haven’t gained any weight in the past few months, so that is the good news. Encouraged by this, I measured myself and found I had lost 5 inches from around my chest, 7 inches from my waist, and 11 inches from my hips. While I don’t think I will lose a lot of weight during the holiday season, I intend not to gain any either. That seems doable, right?
In the past, when I tried to lose weight, I ran or walked (when I got older) and dieted. This usually resulted in a slow but steady loss. This time, it’s different. I’ve lost many inches and I have dropped TWO dress sizes—but I’ve lost relatively little weight. Figuring by my scale, I have lost around 23 pounds since the first of February. That might be more than two dress sizes for some people, but I am 5’10”, and 25 pounds usually equals one dress size for me.
So what is going on here? According to 8fit.com, one cubic inch of muscle weighs about 15-20% more than one cubic inch of fat. But by volume, a pound of fat will take up more space than a pound of muscle. I looked this up because everyone says, “muscle weighs more than fat.” It has been a regular chorus in my life as I bitch and moan about not having lost more weight.
Anyway, It’s my own fault. When I started this whole thing, I was stumped and in a downward spiral. I wasn’t exercising because my right knee was too painful. I was gaining weight. I didn’t know how to fix it. I am one of those people who has lived inside their heads for an entire life, hoping that the body would perhaps take care of itself.
Faced with the reality of my situation, and acknowledging that I needed help to fix it, I joined a local health club and hired a personal trainer. Over the past four and a half months, I have tried to get to the gym every day to do cardio on a recumbent bike that doesn’t stress my knees. I don’t make it every day, but I do most days. I worked my way up on the recumbent bike from a quarter of a mile to my current ride of four miles.
Now that I am more familiar with the machines at the club, I also use some of those, and/or use the dumbbells. There are a couple of machines I don’t use unless Zach (my trainer) is there because they involve grasping something and then sitting down. Way down. I’m too nervous about hurting my knee to try that—I need Zach to do the lowering part after I am seated.
And then there are the physical therapy exercises, aimed at improving the musculature around my bad knee and my left shoulder (which also left the planet and needs replacing). Doing a full round of PT usually takes about an hour. So, what with one thing and another, I am exercising more every day than I ever have before.
The result is that I have put on a lot of muscle. I don’t know how much, but enough to offset quite a bit of fat loss. Muscle burns energy, so adding muscle helps to burn more fat–something else people tell me all the time.
I have continued following Weight Watchers throughout this process. I have never been able to just diet and lose weight. Or just exercise and lose weight. No, I have to do both, which I suspect is true of most people. (Friday nights are splurge nights, though. Sanity is also important.)
And yes, I feel a lot better. I have more energy, my balance is better, and I am moving better. The only question I have is, will my orthopedic surgeon still want me to lose another 27 pounds before he will do the surgery? Or will he see the muscle gain as part of the equation? I’m seeing him this week, so I’ll find out.
[The painting is “The Persistence of Meowmory,” by Salvador Dali and Svetlana Petrova.]
My apologies to the artist. This was uncredited, but if anyone knows who the artist is–other than “hir”– I would like to acknowledge them.
It has now been 15 weeks since the start of my “Big, Fat Weight-Loss Campaign.”
In 15 weeks, I have lost only two pounds. Despite taking Ozempic for six of those weeks. Despite exercising almost every day. Despite the physical therapy, personal trainer, and health club membership (which I am actually using this time). Despite being on Weight Watchers and sticking to it except for Friday dinners.
THIS is why I hate trying to lose weight. It feels like I have to claw it off, ounce by ounce. I only lose in tiny increments, and only if I work at it all the time. That’s why I gave up in the first place— losing weight feels like a full-time job with no salary or benefits. Or promotions. Or stock options. And definitely no holiday party.
I will stop whining now. I wrote a much longer whine, but realized no one would want to read it. Here is what I decided: Ozempic didn’t help and it gives me red, itchy rashes. So, Ozempic is not my knight in shining armor; I need to rescue myself. I stopped taking Ozempic two weeks ago. No change in weight.
But if I am honest about it, there have been significant changes:
I dropped a dress size.
I can make it up the 32 steps to my front door without panting (much)
My balance is better
I don’t get as tired
I lost at least five inches around my waist
I am at a loss to explain how all this could happen without losing any weight, but people keep telling me that muscle weighs more than fat. That’s fine, but I don’t think my surgeon is going to accept dress size as proof that I am ready for knee replacement surgery. And the sense of disappointment when I weigh myself weekly does drag me down.
I don’t see any remedy except to keep on keeping on. I will up my exercise regimen. I have had a glass of wine or two if I had enough WW points to spare at the end of the day. Maybe that is the problem? Can you eliminate all pleasure from your life and still want to live? I guess I’ll find out.
But before I get back to it, I am wrapping myself around a BLTA sandwich, some chips, and a lot of red wine.
Disappointment is inherent to the weight-loss process, but that’s not what I’m referring to. I am—so far—disappointed in Ozempic. I have been taking the drug for six weeks, and I have lost possibly two pounds, although some days, it’s nothing at all on the scale.
I already detailed my experience of the first four weeks/injections on this blog. I was unable to get the medication in time to take the fifth injection on my designated day, so the nurse practitioner advised taking a half dose to get started again, to try to avoid the nasty side effects I experienced before. She told me how to get a half-dose or quarter-dose out of my 1mg-only pen.
So I injected .5mg of Ozempic for the past two weeks. It did not curb my appetite as much, but i stuck to the Weight Watchers points program with little trouble. I also continued my exercise program. I felt more or less normal the entire time. But I lost no weight, despite not increasing my caloric intake.
It also turns out I am allergic to Ozempic. It gives me itchy rashes. I am less perturbed by the rashes than I am by the failure to lose more weight. But if it gives me itchy rashes and does not help me to lose weight, it makes it easy to lose the Ozempic. I plan to use the remainder of the pen I currently have. If I see progress (in the form of noticeably less poundage), I will continue. If not, I will gladly stop taking it and the truckloads of antihistimines I take to combat the itching. I can use the $450 a month on something else, I am sure.
By the way, it is really hard to find images for the topic of weight loss that I don’t find offensive. The lady I chose to grace this entry is far too thin, but I liked her expression. Most cartoons, photos, and art I have found depict grossly obese women stuffing their faces with fattening foods. If I did that, I’d have been dead long ago. There are very few positive images of large women out there, and the ones I did find were not appropriate to this particular theme. No surprise, I guess. In honor of honoring our bodies, be they ever so imperfect, here is Hilda, my favorite pin-up girl. Hilda always looks like she is having fun, and nothing stops her from being beautiful AND fat.
Note: I am taking a break from “My Big Fat Weight Loss Campaign.” I hope to have positive progress soon, but right now I am stuck in the doldrum of dieting, despite Ozempic. Here’s something else to chew on.
I have been rewatching Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS to fans), which is the first time I have viewed the series since its original airing in the 1960s. I just watched an episode called “Turnabout Intruder,” story by Gene Roddenberry and teleplay by Arthur H. Singer. It’s an episode I have no memory of. Apparently it was pre-empted by a presidential speech at the time it was supposed to air. It aired later, but I must have missed it.
Briefly, the story is that Kirk visits Camus II, responding to a distress call. Among the survivors are one of Kirk’s former girlfriends (right on brand here, but there’s a twist), Dr. Janice Lester, and a physician, Dr. Arthur Coleman. It quickly becomes apparent that Dr. Lester and Kirk did not part on friendly terms. Kirk was going off to be a starship captain. Lester also wanted to be a starship captain–but was not allowed to hold that position because of her gender. She was angry, and took it out on Kirk, who skedaddled off to the stars.
Hold on–it’s the year 225something, and WOMEN ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CAPTAIN STARSHIPS. It kind of made me sad that Roddenberry’s vision didn’t stretch to that.
Continuing with the story, Dr. Lester assaults Kirk and subjects him to an alien technology that switches their personalities or selves into the other’s body. So Kirk is now in Lester’s body and vice versa. Her claims that she is actually Kirk are dismissed as illness, but Spock does a mind-meld with her and knows the truth. Spock attempts to free “Lester,” but is caught.
Kirk (actually Lester) calls for a court-martial of Spock, with himself, Scotty and Bones as the judges. During the procedure, Kirk (in Dr. Lester’s body) is allowed to testify, and this is what Kirk says about Lester: “Most of all, she wanted to murder James Kirk, the man who once loved her. But her intense hatred of her own womanhood made life with her impossible.”
Really? Was it “her intense hatred of her own womanhood”? Or was she an ambitious person who was deeply thwarted, all because she lacked a penis?
During this show trial, Lester (in the person of Kirk) does some table pounding and red-faced shouting. Scotty and Bones meet outside the courtroom to confer. Scotty says. “I’ve seen the captain feverish, sick, drunk, delirious, terrified, overjoyed, boiling mad, but up to now, I have never seen him red-faced with hysteria.”
“Hysteria,” of course, is a dog-whistle for “like a woman.” I assume most people know that the word derives from a Latin word meaning “womb,” as the womb was believed to be the cause of it. Thus, men were considered incapable of hysteria.
At the end, Kirk and Lester are switched back by some unclear methodology. Janice Lester, back in her own body, collapses weeping in Kirk’s arms, and then in the arms of Dr. Armstrong, who has aided and abetted her all along. Armstrong takes charge of the sobbing woman and leads her away “to take care of her.”
Kirk puts the cap on it by noting, “Her life could have been as rich as any woman’s…if only…if only…”
I noticed he did not claim that her life could have been as rich as any man’s. And a woman’s life, it went without saying, is limited, and women should just accept these limitations and be happy with them.
Although I expected some misogyny/discrimination against women from TOS, this episode shocked me. As a woman born in 1950, it made me realize how far I have come in my own thinking that I could be shocked by this. There are now two generations of women who have grown up believing they are equal to men and deserve the same rights. I find this extremely encouraging.
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