Worst Week Ever

Reasons, in no particular order:

My shoulder still hurts and I still can't reach around my to my back and hook/unhook my good bras. Wearing old, stretched out, grey bras that I *can* hook in the front and twist around to the back is depressing.

My uterus is trying to kill me. Any woman in or past their 40s knows what I mean. Younger women, I will spare you the painful news of what you have to look forward to. Dudes, you just don't wanna know.

I can't afford my student loan payments and had to get a forbearance, which only adds to my interest piling up and is not a real solution.

My cat Bennet, who's been ill all summer, reached the end of the road: that place where I had to take him to the vet and have the kind doctor end his suffering. It was just awful.

Oh! Also!

I forgot to mention my progress in my Year of No Gueros. Having inhaled all of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, I moved on to Kate Atkinson's intelligent thriller/mysteries. I've read Case Histories and One Good Turn, but the library doesn't have the next one, nor does Bookmooch.com. I found her male protagonist remarkably non-douchey for an ex-cop. Her book of short fiction, Not the End of the World was both comical and apocalyptic, if you can imagine it. There's a subtext of parental worry throughout all of her work, particularly fathers worrying about their daughters. Interesting. Also, she's making me want to revisit Edinburgh. I was only there for a few days and mostly we drank a lot, except for a trip to the National Gallery which is one of my more favorite museums. Anyhow, Edinburgh: I think I need to go back.

Also, Tayari Jones' Leaving Atlanta was short but deep and dark and she is one of those writers who remembers how children think and feel. Remarkable. I've got her next book in the mail to me directly.

I'm in the middle of Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup and I'm not so much in love with it. It's kind of slow, and, oh, I don't know, the complications of race in South Africa, why must they always be seen through the lens of an interracial romance? I find this trope tiresome. Her male protagonist, Abdu, is more interesting than her female protagonist, who's trying so hard to shed her privilege but so far, she just can't do it. She lands in his desert home, after he is deported, and asks where the bathroom is, she'd like a hot bath. In the desert. Sigh. Anyway, it's Nadine Gordimer and she's a Big Deal and so I will certainly finish this book, but I think I'm going genre next: Octavia Butler is up next on the reading list.

Mortality: bo-o-gus

Between my cats' various ailments, and my newly diagnosed bone spur, which seems to be the cause of all of this shoulder aching, I am a broke motherfrakker, yo. I have spent all of my money at the vet and the chiropractor, and I haven't even gotten the bill from the orthopedist, whose GIANT NEEDLE FULL OF STEROIDS really didn't help much at all. At least he gave me a Lortab prescription, which neither the chiro nor the massage therapist was able to do. I'm considering acupuncture because I fear the ortho's next recommendation will be surgery. I don't want some yahoo slicing my shoulder open and sanding down my bone.

I don't like this aging business, not one stitch.

Godwinned by the radio: Shouty White Men edition

So I'm tootling to work this morning and turn on NPR. I hear part eleventy-billion in a series called "Why Miss'ssippi So Fat, Y'all"? The discourse here has yet to be embiggened regardless of how much they talk about it on the radio. It's like everybody in the fucking state thinks it's all about french fries. I have yet to hear anybody mention the high cost of nutritious food, the link between poverty and poor nutrition, the genetic component, or the fact that we should be treating diabetes, high blood pressure, and actual diseases, rather than hassling fat people who may or may not be unhealthy. I actually heard the state health czar say that it was high time being fat was considered socially unacceptable in Mississippi. Because, you know, 'round here, fat people get all the love.

But I digress. Because what I really want to yak about is the snippet of Shouty White Man Radio I heard after I got disgusted with NPR. I flipped through a coupla stations and find a Shouty White Man talking about eugenics. Eugenics! Who knew Shouty White Men cared about such things, right? He mentions early eugenics, which were bad before the Nazis commenced to genocide, and I'm thinking - huh - is there now a Shouty White Man who isn't a total tool? [For those who like to skip to the end of the novel and read it first, the answer is no. I know you're shocked.] And then he says there are people making eugenics-type statements here and now! In the 1970s! In the 1990s! YES! [I will pass over in silence that it's no longer the 1990s.] They are comparing the value of babies and teenagers, old people and middle aged people! [And I'm thinking: is he talking about trial lawyers? Because that doesn't sound like eugenics to me. That sounds like those formulas that help juries decide how much to award survivors in the case of wrongful death.] I'm wondering if these new eugenicists are rising in Germany, or what? Where are they!? I'm on the edge of my seat. Y'all, you are gonna be shocked. I was.

They are advising President Obama on health care reform.

Yeah. THAT'S where Shouty White Man was going with this. And I roll my eyes, and slump in my seat, because it's true: all Shouty White Men on the radio are idiots. Sigh. He totally Godwinned the conversation from the git-go and I missed it. He's comparing health care reform advisors to the architects of the Nazi genocide. For fuck's sake, do the Shouty White Men have no integrity whatsoever? I can't take any more. I change the channel. And then, I need to know - who is the Shouty White Man - and I go back and find it's Glenn Beck. He's the one I hear is less of an asshole than the other guys, the one who's kind of "middle of the road." The one with compassion, because he cries a lot. No. He's a fucking moron, yo.

Pardon my absence

I have been reading Sookie Stackhouse novels in all of my available waking hours.