A Woman's Right To Say No And Be Heard

There are 207,754 victims of sexual assault in the US every year. Almost half of the victims at 44% are under the age of 18. Most sexual assault victims are under the age of 30 the account for 80% of all rapes. Only 46% of those cases will ever get reported and 97% of the perpetrators will never see a day in jail. The reason for that is the female victims are made by society to feel that the sexual assault WAS ALL THEIR FAULT.

We live in a society where men are taught that women are lesser than they are. We're objects of their sexual desires so WE have the burden to protect ourselves from being raped. If WE aren't careful enough to protect ourselves, WE aren't supposed to open our mouths and report it because guys will be guys and we'll ruin their lives.

The 15 year old in Steubenville was blamed for what happened to her because she went to a party and got drunk. Nobody wanted to prosecute the 2 boys involved and when it happened, the 15 year old was treated to death threats from other teens because what happened to her was ALL HER FAULT.

Two 13 year olds found themselves in the same situation in Torrington, Connecticutt. They were visiting the guys in an apartment so what happened to them was also all their fault. They too were treated to death threats. Two more sports scholarships lost and that was more important than the violation of the girls.

Children think and act as children. That's why there are consent laws in most states. Very few people anymore seem to grasp the need for those laws. The consensus of opinion these days falls into the old "old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher" category. And we wonder why our children are no longer safe on the streets in our cities and towns.

I can't count the number of times I've heard we have a need to teach women how not to get raped. At the same time, I've watched the number of rape threats that happen online occur simply because a guy disagrees with something a woman says. We fear being raped and some men have no compunction when it comes to using that against us.

In Twitter alone hundreds of emails and tweets threatening to rape feminists and other celebrities have occurred and until recently nothing was done. Twitter prides itself on not interfering with freedom of speech. Since when are threats to rape and murder someone "freedom of speech"? Women who wish to have control over their own bodies and use birth control, have access to clinics where their needs can be addressed are being called sluts and whores. People like Wendy Davis in Texas who tried to stand up for women's reproductive rights are demeaned for doing so.

Somewhere we've blurred the line between consensual sex and sexual assault. Somehow a woman's right to control of her own body is being lost in a world where men are encouraged to exercise their sexual desires regardless of consent on the part of the female. It appears that women are to be considered to be asking for it by simply leaving the safety of their own home and daring to demand they be treated like the people we are.

We work for a living, we pay taxes. Some of us own our own homes. We vote, we're productive members of society, yet when it comes to sexual crimes perpetrated against us all our contributions are discarded on a trash heap somewhere. We're the ones with the vagina so we're the ones who need to learn how not to be raped. NO! Men need to learn when they've crossed the line, men need to learn that their desire isn't all it takes. Men need to take a seat and listen when women say NO.

The Snapdragon Years

Yeah, THAT kind of Snapdraggin'
I'm there already and I'm not old enough to retire yet. Well, almost, but that doesn't count, does it?

I was reading an article about the 9 common medications that cause chronic fatigue. Guess who takes 2 of them? And, of course, they're the first 2 medications on the list. Lisinopril and Toprol. That's a double whammy right there.

I'm not complaining, mind you, well, not much anyway. The alternative is not taking them and having a blood pressure high enough to blow out my veins. When you look at it that way, being really, really tired now and again doesn't seem quite so bad. On the other hand, when I say really, really, I really mean it.

You know those warnings on medication containers that say "Do not operate machinery unless you know how this medication will affect you."? I'm sure you don't pay any more attention to them than I do, right? Well, I have started paying attention since I found out what chronic fatigue feels like. If you've never had it before, the first episode can be frightening. You start aching all over, legs turn to jelly and you feel like the next step will find you lying on the floor. Half an hour of sleep and it's like it never happened. Except you know it did and you're scared it will happen again at the wrong time. Like when you aren't at home so you can take that nap. Hasn't happened yet, but...

The information for these medications say that these episodes are your hearts way of responding to the medications and once it gets used to it, the symptoms cease. That's a bold face lie. They never cease, you just don't have them as often. Which is perfectly fine by me because that way I don't get those not so gentle reminders that I'm getting old.
  Willie Nelson and SNOOP DOGG???? The really strange thing is that I like it. That's the part of me that's snapped. Trust me, it WILL happen to the rest of you sooner or later. Heh!

Sometime You Really Get The Perfect Gift

This has been an interesting week to say the least. Last Sunday I was getting ready to face the woodpile and see how much of it I could get stacked in the shed for winter. I heard noises outside in the shed but assumed it was Hubby just coming home. When I went outside, there was Youngest and his family, plus a friend of my grandson's, stacking wood in the shed. For the first time in our history, every single block of wood is now neatly stacked in the shed and outside it. This is remarkable since we usually don't manage to get that job done until Halloween.

It took 5 people 2.5 hours to stack this stuff. That's a lot of bending over, picking up 16 inch long blocks that weigh more than I care to carry, loading them into my yard cart, pulling the cart to the shed and unloading the cart. It's a job that usually takes Hubby and myself picking away at it, a few weeks to finish. Done in a matter of hours, this early in the year. We didn't know this was going to happen so not only was it a gift for us, it was a surprise. I keep looking out the window, admiring the finished stacks. It's a gift that is still giving pleasure.

Also this week we learned what happened to Dave, the former companion to our Precious Kitteh. It's going to make life somewhat complicated in the Precious Kitteh department, but we'll work things out somehow.

I had gone up to the local store and on the way back spotted Precious at neighbor Ed's. Stopped to pick him up, he likes the short drive home sometimes. Ed and I were talking when 2 pick up trucks pulled into the driveway at the abandoned property, unloaded some Toro brush cutters and started work on the weeds that were sadly overgrown.

The last Thursday in July there had been a county tax sale so we thought possibly someone had bought the property for taxes. It wasn't until Precious started mewing excitedly and running towards one of the guys that we realized it was Dave. He's been in county jail for the past 11 months.

Essentially the problem was the adult son of the girlfriend rather than the girlfriend herself. The son is in his middle 20s, wouldn't look for a job, wouldn't help around the home. He stayed up all night playing computer games, slept all day and pretty much took whatever he wanted without giving anything back. Of course, Mom didn't think anything was wrong with that picture and when Dave objected to being used, it got nasty. Dave broke the guys nose, got hit in the head with an iron fry pan which knocked him out cold. Dave spent time in the hospital ER and he came home after that but the girlfriend and son filed charges against him so he was arrested and hauled off to jail.

Naturally he was found guilty and drew a 10 month jail sentence on the charges filed against him. He's been out awhile, but didn't have the money to move back in so he's been staying with friends. He won't have money to turn the power back on until September so I still have a second kitty, but I suspect he'd rather be with Dave. I was quite surprised at how excited he was when he saw Dave. Cats can be very unforgiving when things happen which affect their living standards. By no stretch of the imagination would I ever believe Dave is a nice guy, but he loves that cat and Precious loves him back. That was pretty obvious.

He's been around to eat every day and sometimes will spend time in the house, but as soon as he hears Dave, he's out of here like a shot. Dave is trying to fix all the damage the squatters caused to his home. There's a couple of broken windows and the door to the cabin needs replacing. In addition to the yard work he's doing, he'll be around pretty much every day until he can move in.

After he moves back in I think Precious will pretty much decide where he wants to be. I'm sure he'll choose Dave most of the time. I'm also sure he'll come by from time to time since we feed the better cat food. This will give me a chance to make sure he's armed with the flea/tick treatment I use on him. He's a free spirit and enjoys time in the woods where the ticks all hang out and I don't care to find any of those ticks in my home, or fleas. Butterscotch wouldn't like that at all. Some gifts are just better than others.

Got My Education In The School Of Hard Knocks

In October of 2010 polls indicated that 77% of Americans believed that the cost of entitlement programs would bankrupt the country. Fast forward to this morning, August 8 of 2013 and FOX is saying that 77% of Americans believe that we the people look to the government to do what we won't do for ourselves. No, I was not voluntarily listening to FOX, it was the channel my Thursday morning client had on. He's deaf, it's loud and there is no place to go except outside to get away from hearing it.

During the election campaign, when I was caring for his wife, that channel would be on the entire time I was in his house and we would wrangle a little about what was being said. Not too much since in a clients home I'm not allowed to voice my opinions on politics or religion, so I always kept it light and let him see what I thought by reading my face. Now that his wife is in a nursing home and I am there to care for him, his opinions have undergone quite a change.

The reality of just how little the government actually pays for has occurred. FOX is no longer the be all and end all source of information the way it used to be. His opinions are now formed by his life experience as mine has always been. At 86, he now knows just how much spin there is on everything FOX reports, and he's developed a liking for old movies, Matlock and Hoda and Kathy Lee.

I had an "I told you so" moment this morning. I mentioned, in passing, (lol) that he no longer watches FOX as much as he used to. He did a little spitting and sputtering about it, but his explanation actually ended with the words I've used as the title for this post. Being honest, I did allow that 77% of Americans quite likely do believe that people look to the government to do what they won't do for themselves. His response? It was, verbatim "Maybe these people need to open their eyes and see that it isn't that we won't, it's that we CAN'T."

His wife is being cared for in a nursing home which is taking every penny they had set aside over his Social Security. The plan was to sell his home and move him into an assisted living home or a Senior apartment complex in the city. He had a real estate broker come to assess the value of his home and after finding out what it would sell for, it was discovered that the nursing home, despite it's getting paid, has placed a lien on it.

He can sell his home but the proceeds must be placed in an escrow account and used to pay for his wife's care if his money runs out. This leaves him without enough money to pay for assisted living so his two daughters are paying for homecare since he doesn't qualify for any assistance from Medicaid.

They pay for a nurse to come and make sure he's taking his medications correctly. He's forgetful and doesn't always. I go for 3 hours every Thursday to help him with his shower, laundry and household tasks like changing sheets and making sure his bathrooms are clean. His daughters live down south. One in Kentucky and the other in the Carolinas. They come to see him as often as they can. They may try to take him south for the winter. I don't believe he'll go since it would mean leaving his wife of 66 years behind. They wouldn't be able to take her since she requires care that can't happen in a home setting anymore.

The problem is that no matter how much you set aside for your old age, the unforseen expenses can eat that up in a very short time. Most of my clients money was in the hands of Wall Street. He lost a great deal in 2008 when the market went south and hasn't been able to recover. The reality of life for the elderly is that the expenses one incurs keep rising and ones income stays the same.

Of course, that's not anything we'll hear from FOX news. They prefer to feed the Conservative meme that everyone, except the rich, are looking for a handout on the backs of those who worked for their money. They'll find out when it's their turn to experience the problems of old age.

Driving My Bus

I've been sitting here for 5 minutes or so, staring at the blank screen of the post editor and watching the cursor blink on and off. Something is nagging at the back of my mind and I had planned on getting it out in the open, but the more I think about it the more I realize I'm flirting with disaster if I do so.

It involves clients and suspected prescription drug abuse. These clients are very internet savvy and if I say too much and they recognize themselves I am violating HIPAA laws which could result in serious fines and the possibility of jail time for me. If other family members, who know I blog, ever stumble across my opinions regarding that situation, there will be major trouble. Sometimes it's just best to keep what I think to myself.

Lately I'm disgusted with politics and the always present keyboard activists who seem to want to fight with everyone at the first inkling their words are not agreed with 100%. This my-way-or-the-highway attitude is getting on my next to the last nerve. The only way to move our country forward is through compromise which will hopefully include the best ideas of both parties. What we have instead is a House Speaker who says that it isn't the duty of Congress to make laws, their duty resides in the repealing of laws. I'm surprised my jaw didn't break when it hit the floor.

I attended a symposium conducted by an acquaintance of mine. She's a licensed psychologist who doesn't agree with the tendency to blame our parents for all the things that are wrong in our lives. She's quite firm on taking responsibility to be a better person and to stop using our past or outside influences to be intentionally destructive in our future. She asked all of us in the beginning of her talk "Who drives your bus?" She then went on to ask if our bus is driven by our TV/computer habits. Do we pay too much attention to the things our neighbors have rather than to the things we have that fit within our individual budgets?

She's trying to address the issue of our increased use of drugs to cope with life or to sleep at night. She said that there are valid chemical imbalances that create the need for these drugs in some people, but many of us fail to accept that we aren't entitled to be happy every minute of the day so we insist on treatment for things that would pass on their own. Some depressions are temporary. Unfortunately we perpetuate those temporary depressions by treating them with one addicting drug or another.

She made me realize that I had been allowing politics and the fear of what's going to happen to Social Security and Medicare to drive my bus. I got a little bit lucky when we flooded here and I did volunteer work which gave me space to forget the fear by replacing it with activity. It was a reminder to me that while the idiots in Congress and their online cheering squad begin to bother me, I can unplug and go do something positive.

Lost But Never Forgotten

I am guilty of not paying attention to my blog. As a result, I didn't notice the profile picture that was missing nor the kitty giving the finger picture that used to sit at the bottom of my page. I thought they were uploaded pictures, but the info on those editors pages states they're the victims of "invalid urls".

My current profile picture is one I took of my own mouse pad. It's been stored in Photobucket for a few years. Since it's mine, it's not likely to be the victim of invalid url disease unless I forget and move it. I haven't been using my Photobucket in awhile, a very long while, since I lost my book in which I wrote all my passwords.

When the book accidentally got put into the wood stove, I started another one with the passwords I could remember. I couldn't remember that one. The downside of being creative with passwords when you are over 60 is they are prone to be victims of those Senior Moments we begin to have. Had I known that the internet would contribute to those moments to the degree it does, I might have passed it by. Well, probably not but it sounded good.

Anyways, I was sitting here looking at the pictures I have in there when all of a sudden I simply logged in. Out of the murky mess that is my mind, something caused a minor volcanic eruption and the information that was spit up was the correct password. To be honest, the incident occurred more like a cat hacking up hairballs with one or two attempts before producing anything. I like the volcanic analogy better.

While perusing my Photobucket I discovered there seems to be quite a few missing pictures. The important ones are there, but there are places on each page beginning somewhere around page 24 that are simply black spaces. I had posted on Blogstream a series of "Wanted" posters for various things and people. When I find something fun to do I tended to overdo it. Especially in the earlier days online.

I believe some of those are missing. I have the one I did of Scratch, Daisy and Mr Ornery's slippers, but the ones I did of Scratchy's alter egos from the cat world are gone. Of course, every single one of those silly comment graphics are all there. My artwork is all there, probably because before I lost my password book, I had moved all those into a sub album. The same with family pictures, they were moved too.

The drug paraphernalia pictures from one of my blogaversary parties are also missing. The mushroom picture, the glass bongs, etc. There are others missing that I can't recall so they were probably not important and wouldn't be available on a blog anywhere since Blogstream is kaput. There are times when I miss the place, but then I realize it took over my life in a way that I didn't expect it could, and probably shouldn't have allowed it to do.

When I started I was grieving the loss of my Mom and dealing with the illnesses that eventually took my Dad. Emotional upheaval that  me into a world where I didn't have to feel the pain. It was all smoke and mirrors but it helped me avoid something that I should have faced head on. I can't claim it was a negative experience since it did allow me the time to heal enough to be strong enough to complete the process. It did prevent me from moving past the anger portion of grief, but I managed it eventually and turned out alright after all.

Too bad the same couldn't be said for Mr Ornery's slippers.

(Insert evil laughter here)

These Cats Will Be The Death Of Me Yet

As I have said before Precious Kitteh was abandoned by the guy who was fixing up the cabin beyond the treeline behind me. Last August there was some kind of trouble, sheriffs, state troopers, etc. The upshot was that Dave abandoned the property and his kitty. Since I can't see it, even from the road, I was unaware that he also had abandoned the RV he was living in.

Neighbor Ed and family live in the house beyond this property and he is separated from it by a less dense stand of trees. Also, since his home is closer to the road, he can see the driveway. He didn't think much of it when a couple battered up pick ups and some people showed up and drove up the driveway. Squatters maybe, or weekend campers looking for a place to party. We don't know.

They arrived early on Friday night and Ed had to call the State Police with a complaint shortly after midnight on Saturday because they were making a lot of noise and were setting off firecrackers in the woods. Not smart, not smart at all.

I would say that Precious went over to see who was on "his" property. After all, he and Dave lived in that RV for much of Precious's life. This poor kitty managed to keep his trusting nature no matter what he has dealt with so it wouldn't have been hard for anyone to pick him up and put him inside what was his home. At some point on Saturday, somebody did that. Nobody let him out again. They might have planned on it, but anyone using property that doesn't belong to them is suspect to me. With no respect for other's property, why would they have respect for a cat?

On Sunday morning when we started hunting for Precious in earnest, Hubby had stopped to let both Ed and Dwayne know he was missing. Ed at some point on Sunday afternoon thought he was smelling smoke so he went over to the property to make sure the fire they had burning was actually out. He said he kept hearing a cat cry, but when he called there was no answer. He thought about it for awhile and then called us to tell us that he heard what he thought was Precious.

He met us over there and we combed through the brush looking for him and calling to him. We were about to give it up when Hubby went over to try the door of the RV. It opened and Precious shot out into Hubby's arms. Hubby, Ed and Myself all started crying. Hubby carried Precious home and we spent time trying to reassure him that things were alright.

After we saw to it he had a meal and lots of water to drink, he wouldn't come near us. He'd let us walk up to him and pet him, but he wouldn't let us pick him up again. It was really hot in the RV. I was worried about heat stroke, and kept going out to check on him. He stayed in the shade but moved farther from our house down the driveway after each check up. So, I finally just left him alone.

He came in at 4 this morning for breakfast, and then again at 6:30. I should say he tried to come in at 6:30. That was an attempt that went downhill in a hurry because Butterscotch shot out the door and off the deck before I could react.

Butterscotch beat feet to the back of the house with Precious in hot pursuit. I went around the front thinking I could head them off and when I got to where I could see, I saw no cats. I freaked out. I started panicking and calling for both of them when Precious walked around a bush and sat down. I ran to him expecting to find Butterscotch and nearly lost it again when he wasn't there.

Cat people talk to their cats and sometimes we do actually get answers. I asked Precious where Butterscotch was and he crouched down and peered into the base of the bush. Sure enough, Butterscotch was hiding under the leaves. He took off before I could get to him and both Precious and I gave chase. Butterscotch went first under the deck and when he turned around to come back out Precious herded him into the wood shed. FINALLY someplace where I could block his exit and get hold of him to bring him indoors.

Once I got everyone squared away, I sat down and did some checking of prices at Lowes online. There will be galvanized steel poultry netting added to the inside of all the deck rails and there will be gates. I just need to have some way to slow down the escaping Butterscotch until I have time to react. I may not need it since he seemed very scared to be out there but I'm not taking any chances with him. He's an indoor kitty, he's not street smart.

It's kind of funny now, but at the time I wasn't too happy. At that hour of the morning my joints aren't working, neither is my brain. Butterscotch is such a bully to Precious indoors, I was really surprised that Precious went after him. Precious is coming in to eat and leaving as soon as he's finished, but other behaviors are back to normal, so he hasn't forgotten being locked into someplace that he couldn't get out of. This will take some time.