A Farewell to my Stevie Cat (and an important PSA)

After five and a half years of being my best friend, our kitty, Señor Stevie Nicks, succumbed to heart disease*.

If I had known it was coming I would have taken the time to have a few more days with him to do all the lovey things people do:

Chasing butterflies

Spinning in a field of flowers

 

Drinking milkshakes together

Going for boat rides in Central Park

Snuggling at home

   

But he was sick... and scared, and we lost him so suddenly. He was barely showing any signs of illness, still eating and playful, sleeping with his butt in our faces, drinking milkshakes, and rowing boats, but then he was gone just moments after getting him to the vet, leaving me and Mike shocked and devastated. I don't know how I have managed my whole life to avoid the up-close death of a pet with as many as I've had. It's a really horrible concept and I don't know who came up with it but I would like to unsubscribe, RIGHT NOW.  In the end, I am glad he chose us and we did everything we could to give him the best life possible. I love him so much and I will never forget my sweet Stevie cat.

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*Stevie died of cardiac arrest from an enlarged heart. He had a grain allergy, to the point that he couldn't even eat poultry that was fed grain or he would itch terribly and barf/poop/gain lots of weight. We found him a grain-free food that had all the nutrition he needed to keep him healthy, in theory. Unfortunately, I am finding now, much too late, that grain-free pet food currently on the market seems to contain some ingredient that might interfere with taurine uptake, which cats (and dogs) need to avoid heart damage. The FDA is investigating this, but there are things you can do in the meantime.

Please, if you are feeding your pet a grain-free diet have their taurine levels tested IMMEDIATELY (or as soon as you can afford to).

If they don't have allergies, stop feeding them a commercial grain-free diet. If they do, please, get their taurine tested and consult with a vet on how best to proceed. Once they have symptoms, which, in Stevie's case was only abdominal breathing, it is often too late, but the damage can be reversed if it is caught early enough with taurine supplementation. No one should go through what we're going through now, losing our pet so young, so please, share this information so every cat lives long enough to replace us as the dominant species on the planet.

Making Crap Laws Work for You: Religious Freedom

So D. Trump just signed yet another executive order.

This one is "guaranteeing religious freedom" and allowing people to opt out of government rules based on "closely held religious beliefs." 

Of course, this is going to be used by some Americans to treat other Americans like dogshit, and that is completely unacceptable. The rule needs to be overturned, and hopefully, the 9th circuit gets on that soon, but in the meantime, how can we make this order work for us so we can benefit from the fuckery going on?

Guys, I came up with the perfect idea. I may be an atheist, but I was raised Jewish, so I have a pretty good grasp of the old testament... and I totally hold this passage in particular pretty close to my heart, what with the whole perpetually broke thing.

Deuteronomy 15:1-2

1 At the end of every seven years you shall grant a remission of debts. 2 This is the manner of remission: every creditor shall release what he has loaned to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother, because the LORD'S remission has been proclaimed.

You know what that means?

Goodbye, federal student loan debt! After 7 years, you shouldn't have to pay that shit anymore.

According to Trump's order:

 "It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom. The Founders envisioned a Nation in which religious voices and views were integral to a vibrant public square, and in which religious people and institutions were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by the Federal Government. For that reason, the United States Constitution enshrines and protects the fundamental right to religious liberty as Americans’ first freedom. Federal law protects the freedom of Americans and their organizations to exercise religion and participate fully in civic life without undue interference by the Federal Government. The executive branch will honor and enforce those protections."

I say we practice the hell out of the Judeo-Christian religion by demanding that the Federal Government forgive all loans after a period of 7 years. If people can keep other people from taking birth control, or can control what we can or can't do with our own bodies, surely we can demand to have our loans forgiven as GOD proclaims!

Clearly, I don't have a law degree. But if shit's gonna be unreasonable, I say we at least try find ways to make it work for us.

Are You Experienced?

One of the crappiest things people can do, in my opinion, is insisting, when someone reports their personal experience, that said person with experience is clearly stupid/crazy/lying/in denial and is unaware of what is going on in their own life.

This applies to all sorts of experiences,
Like fat people who are told:

or writers of blargs who are told:
JUST STOP BEING DEPRESSED! YOU WON'T HURT IF YOU JUST GET OVER YOUR LIFE CRUSHING DEPRESSION!
Yeah. Not depressed.
DEPRESSION MANIFESTS IN COUNTLESS WAYS!
Does it ever manifest in being happy and content with your life, and being really motivated, because then maybe, yes, I am terribly depressed, but otherwise, NO, I AM NOT AND I AM GOING TO SHOVE A WAREHOUSE FULL OF TWINKIES UP YOUR BUTT IF YOU DON'T STOP TELLING ME I AM!

If someone is trying to tell you that your account of your own experience is wrong, or tries to assign feelings to you without really listening to you or even asking you how you feel, chances are, they are either trying to manipulate you, or they are an asshole.

After having been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia last week, I was sent to see a therapist yesterday to treat my "depression caused" Fibromyalgia. I willingly submitted to testing and answered questions on a little digital box to measure my sanity:

Er, does that count having to wake up to pee 10 times a night?
No. You have a reason for that, it means if you don't have a valid reason.
Okay, then no.

What? I don't abuse drugs at all! What the hell kind of question is this!? I don't think you can abuse a substance less than not doing them at all, unless I started doing nice things for drugs, like making them fancy dream houses with a working elevator or something?

False?

What's going on here? I mean they haven't in a while.

 Well, I guess true, now...


And after about 10 minutes, I had read and answered all of the questions to the best of my ability, since it asked many loaded questions along the line of "Have you stopped beating your wife? Y/N" What!? Wait! I don't even have a wife. Crap. This test should have been written by someone with a background in ambiguities.

And then the very lovely man who was assigned to talk to me plugged the test box into the the computer and a piece of paper issued from his printer with my results and after reviewing them, he said "As I am sure you are well aware, there is not a damned thing wrong with you psychologically." Which is what I have been saying to my doctors all along.

Operation: Mother May I?

Here I go being political again. If you think that we would be better off if the government controlled the lives of women, reading this will likely piss you right the hell off and your time would be better off spent elsewhere pretending I am just PMSing.





After reading more on proposed contraception bans and comments about how women should be at home taking care of children instead of working so we don't need things like Head Start, the following occurred to me:

I wonder how grating it would be to Republican politicians if hoards of women tweeted them every time we wanted to use our vaginas to see if it was okay with them.

Perhaps having to hear about tampons, and douches, and discharges, and masturbation, and kinky sex, or even conventional vanilla sex within church sanctioned marriages, 24 hours a day, would make them less interested in controlling our junk.

Think this might make a difference? Want to help make a point? Tweet your daily vaginal activities to your favorite Republican on twitter with the hashtag #MotherMayIGOP 

Don't have a republican in mind? 

You can start here:
@Senate_GOPs
@RoyBlunt
@RickSantorum
or do a search for your local GOP representative on the Google.

Don't have a vagina?

Be sure to share this post with your favorite vagina owner.

Disclaimer- One should never wait for a reply from someone to use their vagina. At this point, your vagina is yours and yours alone (unless you have figured some clever way to rent it out or are a conjoined twin)... take advantage of it while you still can!