16
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=excBsIv_3xI]
I love the Innertubes sometimes so much I just want to say Squeee.
From WorkShak
16
Rick Rolls from My Confined Space
16
Boys, I want you to go here and look at this picture while I and the women folk talk about some important stuff about our lives.
As I get older, I find myself going through the same thing my mother did about 20 years ago. It’s called, da da dummmm, menopause. First of all, it exists. I’m not going to be one of those women that says “Menopause was never a problem for me.”
I cry foul on that one.
Our bodies are changing, we see that we have lived more than half our lives and while we are not old, neither are we young. We are. It’s a transition.
And, my friends, we are fabulous but it’s part of the process of life.
By the time women, and I guess I’m just speaking for myself here, hit my 40s I started pondering the meaning of life a bit more. I could honestly only think about what I had not done in my life not the accomplishments I have fought tooth and nail to get done. I got a bit tired, I wasn’t feeling as well as I did even five years ago. I found myself somewhat detached from who I was really was.
Who was I? Who am I now?
And, as I’ve said before, I’m too tired for an affair and too broke for a red sports car. Yes, I had, and still do sometimes, hit the middle-aged crazies. Of course the middle-aged crazies hits men as well. It’s pretty much a non-gender thing.
We talk about here on the tubes about different waves of feminism, of how women and men’s lives differ as they grow older and the fact that our bodies completely, or at least it feels like it, betray us. It’s a bond women have. Men have bonds too but I’m not a guy so I can’t comment about that.
It’s like our bodies say “Hey make a baby” when we are in puberty and we learn to deal with that part of being a girl and then when you hit 40 it turns right around and says to us “I changed my mind” and on top of that I’m going to make you feel all nutso for awhile. KThxbai.
I have talked extensively to a couple of woman who are going through the same conundrum of juggling emotions, our professional lives, our sexual identities and feeling like poo all at the same time. It’s good to have conversations about real things instead of ignoring them. The reality is that it’s a messed-up thing, that emotions are different and that it’s almost like we find ourselves wondering what we are going through much the same way we did during puberty. And we don’t have the lives of our mothers and our grandmothers which were so different than what we go through now. We have to take care of ourselves financially. There is no white knight on a steed coming into save the day.
And, women need to take care of each other even if it’s just listening to the grim fact that we ain’t getting any younger.
And it’s not all bad.
The uterus is a weird thing campers. I don’t have mine anymore as she was a bit bitchy but we’ve talked about that before.
Now with all of that said, for anyone who hasn’t experienced all this stuff, it’s not fun.
I don’t think people can understand how daunting it is to wake up in the middle of the night sweating like a goat until you’ve been through it. I can’t explain how I was sitting at my desk doing some work earlier this week and felt like my body was being microwaved from the inside out. It’s hard to convey in words to people who haven’t gone through it.
Why do I bring this up? It’s on my mind, that’s all.
I have to tell myself although I’m aging and there is gray in my hair, I’m pretty groovy. I may not look like Cindy Crawford, but I never did anyway.
I am just me.
There’s only one of me so that’s of the good.
And I’m not dead yet.
H/T of the photo to the lovely Aunt B.
16
Rep. Mark Maddox is trying to help:
State Rep. Mark Maddox, a longtime board member of CDS, has taken up the fight to recoup the losses imposed on community providers by DMRS. Maddox, whose sister Janet is also a CDS client, is sponsoring an amendment to the appropriations bill that would return the 6.1 percent that has been taken away since January.
Here’s what’s going on:
They look forward to it every year, but this year, for the first time in three decades, the clients of Community Developmental Services were unable to attend the annual West Tennessee Spring Dance, held last Thursday night in Jackson.
At least 1100 people attended the dance, held at the West Tennessee Fair Grounds, but 150 clients and staff of CDS – a community-based, nonprofit organization in Martin serving the needs of developmentally disabled adults in Northwest Tennessee – were conspicuously absent.
“The dance is the social event of the year,” says CDS Executive Director Cathy Cate. “Our folks anticipate it all year long, and this is the first time we’ve ever not been able to take them.”
CDS is also skipping out on its annual participation in the state’s Special Olympics, being held this weekend in Nashville, and has made the decision to reduce its upcoming summer camp from four nights to one – all because of recent financial pressures.
“We can no longer afford to pay for the overtime of our staff, and for all the gas it takes to participate in these events,” says Cate.
In January, Tennessee’s Division of Mental Retardation Services enacted a 6.1 percent payment reduction to community providers caring for some of Tennessee’s most vulnerable citizens. The cuts, intended to last through the end of June, have translated into a $13,000 per month loss for CDS.“To get itself out of debt, DMRS is putting the agencies in debt, and the people we serve at risk,” says Cate.
This is tragic. CDS has a long history of helping people all over west Tennessee. Cate told me that her staff hasn’t had a raise in four years.
Programs are taking a hit.
CDS is a good organization. I hope they can get what they need to survive.
16
I’ve written about this before and I’m not going to go into it more than just to say that I really am so disappointed in the national press focusing on the actions of Bill Hobbs and the Tennessee GOP.
I’ve lived in Canada and In Europe for long stretches of time. I guess I’m not your typical Tennessean. The stereotypes of Tennesseans is a reality because I’ve seen how we are perceived outside of this country’s walls. It’s something we have anyway. Not everyone in the state of Tennessee, for those of my readers that live outside the state line, is like the way we are being portrayed.
When industry is looking to move to Tennessee, are they going to be looking at the Obama bashing that we’ve seen over the last few months and think, “No, I think I’d rather move to Minnesota.”
I’m a Tennessean. I love the way the mountains in the east side of the state have lazy clouds hiding the tips of their peaks. I love the color of winter wheat which is impossibly green that is so vibrant and alive that it makes one wonder if you could swim in it’s buttery softness. I love the feel of Midtown in Memphis where there is a subtle urgency that makes you pick up your feet. I love sitting in the juke joints with people who talk about their parents, and their parents’ parents and how the first time they heard The Beatles they thought they had died and gone to heaven. I like that in Nashville I would go to Pancake Pantry and see Lyle Lovett eating chocolate chip pancakes not once but numerous times and that no one bothered him. I love the way the wind whips off the river in Chattanooga as you walk downtown. The cypress knees that line Reelfoot Lake are incredible as you see hundreds of turtles neatly lined on fallen logs.
It’s a good state really. We are not the crude lines that are being portrayed by the national media right now. That is not the Tennessee I live in.
I make fun of Hooterville, but I stay here because, at this point, I choose too. It’s flawed but it’s also not too bad and I love the people here. I do. I feel such affection for my home. When people are struggling to make ends meet and I see that the state branch is making a short-term funny (I don’t think it’s amusing in the least) I can’t help but wonder what the long-term cost will be.
Our area lost a plant several years ago because of James Hart being written up in a Florida newspaper. The industrial folks who were looking to bring industry here didn’t like that a (former) alderman talked to Hart and said he agreed with Hart’s blathering. Hart has been denounced by the GOP and that’s not my point, but it was that two men’s words made a difference that impacted thousands of people’s lives.
My state is not a one-note joke.
Photos From Hoots
