Musings and Mumbles

 I am a Gen X kid. I was born as the last "official" wave of military started being brought home from Vietnam.  Kids those days were expected to be seen and not heard. Not in a "be silent, you're bugging me", but a "you don't have a say in your life, so just push through, suck it up, and deal" kind of way. "Suck it up" wasn't what my dad would say. It was "Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about". It wasn't what my mom would say, either. It was "You're being overly-dramatic" or "Stop being so sensitive!". My parents were a perfect product of their age and how they were raised. I know, logically, that they loved me the best way they knew how. The fact was, though, this meant they frequently dismissed my own feelings as unimportant or inconvenient. I know now, at 51, that how they'd been raised (I'd heard the stories - CPS would have been ALL over my grandparents) created a ...

 I keep seeing posts and videos where people - outraged people - talk about how the regime isn't "playing by the rules".  They're right, of course. That's sort of the point.  The ugly part of the situation with what's happening in DC right now is that this is exactly what many people voted for. They were tired of playing by the rules, because the rules hadn't helped them in so many years...  And Democrats, for all their pontification about being for equity didn't really do much for many people. They ignored the fact that we had a significant jump in homelessness over the past 4 years, due in large part to a wage gap the likes of which the world hasn't seen since France in the 1700s.  And anyone who's a world history major knows how that turned out. To be very clear: I am not, in any way, shape, or form, supporting or condoning what is happening. I'm saying that it's happening because a lot of lower class people were tired of being ignor...

 I'm tired.  I know that, logically speaking, I'd be less tired if I ate right, exercised, and drank water. Or, at least, that's what doctors tell me. They also tell me that I should come in to see them regularly, and take my meds regularly. Which, on one hand, I know is also true. On the more cynical hand, I look at their demand to see them as them robbing me. It's not hard to see how difficult the health of America is right now. Much of it can be boiled down to a few top reasons, in no particular order: - highly processed foods with little nutritional value but a lot of fillers, that is cheap and easy to get - rapidly rising costs of healthy foods, with limited access to them due to either mileage or low wages - increasing costs of employer-paid insurance premiums, causing employers to move to lower-cost, high-deductibles plans, which place the majority of costs on the employee until they reach that deductible. The US has quite often struggled with the idea that healt...

 It's my birthday month. My birthday normally wasn't something big to begin with, after I turned 8. My 21st was only memorable because literally no one (not even the live-in boyfriend) showed up for it. I'm turning 51. I wouldn't even bat an eye but it's weirder this year. I live in a country that has been turned on its head over the last 8 years with QAnon, FOX News, and the MAGA enthusiasts... Though calling them enthusiasts indicates things are more sports related than what they've become - they're revivalists, of a sort. Asked 15 years ago if a cult would pop up and be voluntarily voted into the white house, I'd have said you were absolutely high. No one in their right mind would want someone like Jim Jones or David Karesh in charge of the US. And yet here we are. I remember growing up with a racist I he family. "It's just how she was raised", and "Oh, she's old, you just need to let her be." This was how it was couched. L...