From Two X's (Not a Beer)

Yesterday I managed a can opener—that was to open a can of chicken noodle soup for dinner. Breakfast, fixing coffee and toast was too much work.

Today I popped up, fixed my husband’s lunch, did the dishes, threw some laundry into the washer, folded clothes, emptied the garbage, swept the floor, and hey, I’m ready to go.

Two days of either stomach flu or food poisoning made me think I was dying.

NOT!

I believe I can hang in there a while longer.

So what are we going to talk about?

I am fed up with nitpickers, naysayers, and mongers of atrocities, I got into it too, it’s so easy to see what’s wrong with schools, the health system, the government, people who are trying to “help” you  write, sell, blog, get published, start your business, sell to millions, that I am saying screw it. And this morning—you probably saw it, the woman Nellie Stevens who discovered the XY chromosome that determines how we get to be male or female, didn’t get credit because she had two XX’s.  She was a female! Oh, the horror of it. Well now she is honored on Google and her old professor who took credit ought to be red-faced.

But, while being sick I spent a day reading a book, Jason’s Gold by Will Hobbs. YA fiction—good for a sick day, and I wanted to study how he wrote, but I got so wrapped up in the story I forgot to notice.

That’s the way it ought to be.

Monday Fourth of July (before sickness) I saw this on a tee-shirt at Art in the Vineyard in Eugene, Oregon:

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

—E.B. White (Charlottes Web)

That pretty much sums it up.

It Isn’t a Conspiracy, It's an Avalanche

Innocence

Not Everything is a Conspiracy, but there are enough to make us cynical.

Not a good way to live.

Pharmaceutical companies want to make money. Stockholders want to make money. Sales people want to make money. Doctors want to make money. Insurance companies want to make money.

It isn’t a #conspiracy, it's an avalanche.

Let’s use doctors for example.

Most doctors are well meaning.

And then we add prescribed drugs into the mix. Doctors get their information regarding medicines from sales people.

Most sales people are well meaning.

Sales people want their commission. Their job is to sell. They want to please the company and the stockholders. They want to make a living.

They tell the doctors the benefits of a particular drug, the doctor sees the benefit, thus he prescribes it.

“My doctor has me on it,” I hear someone say and I want to scream. “No, you have yourself on it. Your doctor offered it. You took it.”

 Notice what you are putting in your mouth.

It’s the problem with the big industrial age. Things get out of hand.

Be diligent. 

Take care of yourself.

I think back to some of the spiritual practices of old. Many disciplines have said that thoughts create. Many have said that our attitude influences our behavior and the outcome. Meditation clears the brain, lowers blood pressure, centers people. Prayer is talking to a higher power. All these things have been in our culture, but they, like the potions we call medicines, became ritualized. Beliefs about them became so strongly held they became a religion or a superstition. 
Some became suspect, some went underground, or were fought over because they were controversial, and thus many lost their power.

I had a colonoscopy once. I had to sign a form and the bottom line stated that death could be a result.

I said to the doctor, “I normally don’t sign forms that have death as a possibility.”

He said, “You could get run over by a bus too.”

I wanted to say, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” but I didn’t. To antagonize someone about to perform a procedure on me didn’t seem like a good idea.

Instead, I said, ”But I don’t stand in the middle of the road when I see a bus barreling down on me.