Doubled Jane’s med, told her to come back for an MRI in a week or so, and an appointment in about 2 months. She will be the most vetted heart patient in town.
Our health care in Spokane also involves a Multicare operation that is pretty smooth: computerized records and connections and doctors talking to each other. We’re real happy with the cardiology department. You don’t have to track down the other offices and make appointments: they network and hand them to you with consultation on when you’re free: you exit one appointment with secure knowledge of the next visit, where and when.
Other than that, Jane’s had the flu all week, (wearing a mask at the second doc appt) but is generally improving.
Well, here’s hoping all’s well as ends well…
It’s good to hear that the doctors are taking such good care checking her heart health, and I hope she gets over the flu without the extra weeks of feeling dragged down which the European version of the flu brought this winter.
Are you alright for medical insurance, or would it be useful to add some contributions, for those of us who can and want to help?
I always worry when I hear of someone I like in the USA getting sick and needing healthcare, whether doctors or dentist or medicines, considering the generally predatory healthcare (insurance) system you’ve got.
Good that Jane is getting help, and I hope they’ll be able to adjust her treatment so she’s not over-medicated, and can enjoy a lot.
I’m hoping to see both potential rent houses this coming week, so I can make a decision. It hit me, I will likely have to get drapes and a shower curtain, with likely other items. Tomorrow, I will be labeling boxes and doing some prep.
I had some progress on the font draft, which is much closer to where I want it to be, but is still likely to get some tweaking.
Maybe make it ‘anitalic’?
Poor Jane. Hope she improves steadily each day and they get her cardiac situation sorted very very soon. She has my sympathy (and empathy!). Nothing is quite so unsettling as having your heart misbehave. Hope she can rest and try not to worry. (easier said than done!)
Wol, when is your operation? It’s coming up, isn’t it?
Oh dear, the flu atop everything else! Hope Jane recovers fast… and you stay flu-free, CJ!
And this is why I said it’d be a real good idea to marry when it became legal. As her legal wife, if things become dire, you have rights to “be there” and to be part of the decision making process which you hadn’t had.
The fact the clinic scared the daylights out of Jane when I went in for a check for a bad cat bite that ended up being an antibiotic iv —-took a very long time— and they wouldn’t tell her where I was: that frosted it so far as we were concerned. We got a domestic partnership, and when WA decided to convert all those to marriages, we decided, hey, why not get an officiant and a license and throw a party? So we did. We planned an elaborate backyard wedding in 2 months, complete with cake, tables, (nature did the flowers) judge, catering from our favorite pub and bbq place, and all that, wearing kimonos we’d had for years and years. It’s how to do it, I tell you. We relaxed, nobody stressed, and we did not spend ourselves silly.
For the cost of a good party, you also got peace of mind., confirmed. Not a bad trade!
That’s if it’s legally recognized in their state. In many states, same-sex partnerships / civil unions / marriages are not recognized for things like hospital visits, inheritance or sharing of assets (house, belongings, etc.). Likewise, if a couple are boyfriends / girlfriends (not yet in an officially recognized relationship, even if they’ve been together for a long time) or if they are minors, well, again, things like visitation rights for hospital stays can be a big problem.
I live in Texas, where, although people may have civil or religious services to declare themselves partners/married/civil union, the state doesn’t recognize it as an official marriage, despite the Supreme Court ruling. However, years ago now, there were state court cases that legalized same-sex relationships, and allowed student Gay Straight Alliances. — There has been slow progress. — But people still say and do prejudiced things daily without ever thinking about it. (Like remarks or jokes, or their personal beliefs.) — I am more “out” than I was, and come out more often to new people if I feel I need to or if the friendship seems like it’s growing. But I am still unsure and get reminded by the outside world to be careful, at the same time as I see more acceptance from others. It’s hard to know where to step, sometimes. — And I’m too isolated still, and haven’t made progress in finding a special relationship.
(And I just saw a reminder from a YouTube post by a gay couple (married) where they were “catfished” and gaslighted by someone out to cause problems. It reminded me of my own experience a few years ago.)
I feel sure CJ and Jane have things in better preparation to be sure they are OK in hospital and other situations. It’s something I haven’t had to deal with yet, but I have heard of others having trouble from it who had to overcome that.
I realize many people have objections due to personal or religious beliefs. But I know what it’s been like for me, and I wish I had dealt with it so much better earlier in my life. I wish it were not an issue, and that people could simply love who they love, ask someone if they like them, in the same way that a straight guy or straight girl can ask someone they like, with no trouble at all, and with people celebrating and happy and asking positively about them. — I remember back in college, thinking how, when well-meaning friends would ask me what girl I liked or who I was seeing, that they never thought to ask, or dared to bring up, the possibility that maybe I might have wanted some nice guy for a boyfriend. But of course, they didn’t want to insult or make assumptions, and I always said no, I wasn’t seeing anyone, once I had (wisely) realized that dating girls just wasn’t going to work. I hadn’t reached the point where I could be outspoken enough to out myself and say no, but I might like a guy instead. I wonder too, how many of hose friends / acquaintances would have been OK with that, versus who would have been surprised or would not have accepted it.
(Yes, I’m over 50 now and still feel like I am “unlearning” so much of what I grew up with, and still feel so awkward and unfulfilled in that department. There is a part of me that is, or has always been, better adjusted than that, but gets overshadowed so often by my upbringing and negative experiences. I keep hoping it just needs the right set of circumstances to cut loose that Gordian knot and do better.)
— CJ and Jane, thank you both so much for being a shining light, in your writing and your personal lives. Despite how conflicted or frustrated I must sound in what I post, there’s also that more positive side of me that is better off. That side exists right alongside, in dual nature, I guess fused with, the more troubled side, in some dualistic state, much like how one’s greatest strengths can be one’s greatest weaknesses? I don’t feel like I’m getting that across well. — As I’ve said before, CJ, your subtle inclusion of characters and situations, along with those of other authors, helped make a difference for me early on, when I was struggling and needed that.
(These days, I’ve come to believe that my parents didn’t want to see it and deal with it, so they chose not to. If they ever did know or accept that I was gay, they never let me know in any way I knew of, in some positive, accepting, tangible way. I will never know in this lifetime if they would have accepted me if I’d come out. I always believed I couldn’t talk to them. Despite other controlling or overprotective things in our relationship, yet we still had, overall, a good relationship. I just wish I had stood up about some things, at college age, and that I could’ve come out sooner, before or during college. I wish my parents could have been forthright enough to have talked to me and said whether they accepted that about me, since I couldn’t yet bring myself to come out to them.)
The same things happen so often still today. It’s why I wish so much for people to be accepting, to be willing to talk about it and let people know they support them if they are not so straight. I wish fervently that parents and friends would be up front about that with their kids, relatives, and/or friends. In my case, for instance, I wish someone could have sat down and talked with me about it. I know the standard advice is not to do that, but I think some of us need that support before we can begin to open up. Or like me, that’s delayed way too much, despite other things going on in life.
Nuts — sorry for the soapbox, folks. It’s an issue that I still feel so strongly about.
CJ and Jane, I hope always for the best for you both. There are many in life who have brightened the way, along the way. That is so necessary and so often overlooked in the rush of daily living.
I long for my situation to get better. I’m hopeful that a possible rent house will be a step in the right direction, a big improvement and a way past a big set of roadblocks. This has been an odd couple of months for me, with reminders of old past milestones and with much changing in the present, hard to tell if I’m making good progress, but I’m still trying.
Best Wishes, Everyone.
Pssst! “Same-sex marriage has been legally recognized in Washington state since December 6, 2012. – Wikipedia”
I rather wish they’d call it ‘same gender’. Same sex sounds repetitive. One might even venture to say boring.
I agree. I’ve long been annoyed by forms that ask “Sex” when they mean “Gender”. I heard someone filled in “When appropriate.”
funny, when I took English, Latin, and Greek grammars, it was noted that gender applied to nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. “Sex” as we were taught in biology is either male or female. I don’t care what’s “politically correct” these days, there is a difference between “sex” and “gender”.
My view is broader. “Sex” is the fundamental aspect of “sexual reproduction”, meiosis, the exchange of genes, as opposed to “asexual reproduction”. It has nothing to do specifically with designations of “male” or ‘female”. Slugs and snails are hermaphrodites, and although they can reproduce without a partner, yet they also have sexual reproduction. Protists, e.g. Plasmodium falciparum, i.e. the malaria parasite, are neither animal, plant, nor fungus, and yet have sexual reproduction. (P. f. has a particularly complex life cycle.) “Sex” is what enables rapid evolution in changing environments; many times called “Nature’s best invention”.
Thus, I fall back on gender to distinguish “male” from “female”. It is nowhere near enough to encompass “sex”.
So, it boils down to your point of view, right? I’ll keep my own, thanks.
Certainly! I’m not suggesting otherwise, just explaining my own.
“People who map close enough for jazz on the sexuality spectrum” seems too clunky…
That may be a long way around to saying it, but hahah, I love the sentiment, the analogy. 😀
And to Tommie’s point: Yeah, boring would not be good there! 😀
I recall once having to fill out the forms when going to a new chiropractor. I was surprised at a few of the questions. When it came to the one marked, “Sex: M F” (oddly not among the first questions on basic identity and address), by then I was feeling snarky (the forms were long) and I checked Male, but in the margin added something like, “Not Lately.” Hahaha, I didn’t get to hear if it gave the receptionists a giggle when they entered the forms. I also think that was one of the first times I’d had to fill out a medical form since coming out. I don’t recall if I outed myself on the form.
When forms still had a space for ‘Race’, my Mama used to write “no thank you”.
I suntan very darkly. A woman once asked Mama if she was in a mixed marriage. She said, “Yes. My husband is [male]”.
Seems like calling it marriage is all we need to do.
Amen!
I’ve heard people argue various things about which word to use, even among folks who aren’t straight. “Partnership” is a good word, but makes it sound like you might be business partners or lab partners. A “Marriage” is what I want it to be. It’s what we understand as a long-term, committed relationship to another person. And historically, “marriage” has included many things we might or might not count as appropriate in our own culture today. I just want to be able to be with someone, married, partnered, if he and I ever find each other. I want the kind of good, lasting, loving marriage my parents had. Oh, they were not always perfect, but overall, what they had and who they were, were good examples. That I’d wish they had been different on a few things, well, is something I live with. But their example was mostly a good one. I want that with someone; but in my case, I discovered fairly early on that I’d want that with a guy instead of a lady. So marriage it is.
As a teen, when I was in the middle of realizing this, it was one of the greatly dismaying points, to think that I wasn’t going to have that typical American family dream, a spouse, kids, white picket fence, all that. Not having kids to carry on the family name, pass down all that, and not being able to marry (it wasn’t legal back then, and as far as I knew back then, a gay man or couple couldn’t adopt or foster kids) really got to me, because family was always so important to me. Back then, I couldn’t yet even think of the word “boyfriend” applied to me or another boy in a relationship together. I wanted the friendship and the sexual aspect, frankly, but couldn’t yet conceive of it actually being “boyfriends” or a possibility, and so being married / partnered seemed impossible. (This was around junior high and high school age.) — And it seemed mostly so too, when I was college-age and had gone hyper-religious, maybe in an attempt not to face it and live it. — It would be years before I’d learn that even in my ultra-conservative state, gay or lesbian couples sometimes may adopt or foster kids, if there is a sympathetic judge or caseworker who won’t veto that. (There are people for and against it, of course.) — Public opinion is still divided here about gay marriage or being gay / not straight at all, but it’s more accepted than it used to be. — Even so, I feel strange these days, wanting to be able to be open about it, to be out, and yet, still needing to be careful or circumspect about it, for my safety or other people’s. — I still lag behind somehow about finding someone, but then, lately, I”m too isolated in general, not only about that.
I hope maybe this latest backlash of regression and ultra-conservativism, extremism, might be the last gasp before things can really change. I do realize many people still hold personal and religious objections. But I wish they could understand, deep down, how it feels to want to love someone and have a good, committed, lasting relationship with someone, and how it can really be that a person can truly feel and want and need love with someone of the same sex (gender). Why am I gay instead of straight? I have no idea. I was raised that I wasn’t supposed to be, and growing to discover from early on that I wasn’t straight was a very big deal for me. But it is the same as it is for someone straight. Deep down inside, my feelings (emotional, physical, spiritual) long for someone male instead of someone female, and that feels natural and good, even though my conscious self wars with how I was brought up, both religious and secular. I wish the straight folks and religious folks could understand it is very possible to love someone of the same gender or sex, and to long for that in the same way they long for someone of the opposite. Even within how I was raised, there are things that point to an acceptance of it or the recognition that gender / sex are secondary to being human; along with genuine debatable issues in translation, historical and cultural contexts, interpretation, and so on, the hallmarks of Biblical / Torah criticism, both for Christians and Jews, and presumably also for Muslims with the Qur’an.
I wish I could somehow go back and talk with my younger, struggling self, as a pre-teen and teen and college-age young adult, to let him know what I’ve learned over the years. One of the oddest things about it to me is that, in some ways, I feel that before college, about that at least, I was better adjusted. In college, I grew so very much in other ways, but somehow shrank regarding this part of myself, even though there were a few things that would eventually help me change and get to where I am now. I wish I could have grown up with much more positive and healthy examples of how to approach this part of my life. — My mom and dad had a good, loving relationship with each other as best friends and married couple, and a mostly good, and very loving, relationship with me as their son. So I grew up with a good model on that. But it lacked any discussion or acceptance of being gay, and I grew up repressed, shy, and body-shy too (not severely, but probably because I had some idea I liked other boys / males.) I wish I’d had something different than that. (And fortunately, I could find that a little in books and art.)
Dang tangent. — Yes, marriage it is. If I ever find someone or he finds me, and it’s a lasting relationship, marriage is what I want.
@BCS, off-topic. I just came across this series of YouTube videos from LearnDutch (a summer school for non-Dutch people living in the Netherlands who want to learn Dutch), with a total of 250 of the most used sayings and proverbs in Dutch It gives the Dutch saying and then explains it in English, with an example of how to use it: 10 per 10-minute video.
As the Dutch tend to use a lot of such sayings in everyday speech, recognising them is part of becoming fluent.
You’ve not had much time for language studies, and Spanish is more useful anyway, but I thought you might find it slightly interesting, mostly because quite a few of the proverbs are rather weird.
@Hanneke — Oh, thank you! I’ve subscribed there. I hope that will encourage me.
I’m actually embarrassed and vexed at myself for not taking time out each week to do language review and study. I _want_ to do this, but I keep procrastinating, doing other things. I’m not sure if my eyesight (reading printed books) is part of this, or if I’m too distracted, or why I’m not doing like I want. — Seeing and hearing things on YouTube, seeing the written Dutch you’d sent, this has me interested, really intrigued, by Dutch, along with the smattering of Russian and Japanese I’d tried.
My time is so divided right now, but I find time for other things I want or need to do. I need to find the way to get into the habit and keep it up. I am sure I would enjoy it.
Rather than changing costume a few to several days late, this month perhaps a day early, as I am thinking about it now.
This time I honor, if I may suggest, “the first Aspie”. I think a good argument could be made that it should have been called “Doyle’s Syndrome” rather than “Asperger’s”.
Love the costume!
Unfortunately, they have a bit too much detail for this size. One can’t see I’ve got a magnifying glass in my right flipper I’m looking through or the calabash pipe.
Too bad you can’t make the smoke from the pipe morph into the magnifying glass.
Yeah, me too.
Things happen. My “things happen” is getting a jury summons that required rescheduling a medical appointment that had *already* been rescheduled once from their end, and having the “check engine” light coming on in my car. Turns out that its 50kg of cell-phone batteries has hit the end of its useful life (at 17 years – well past the end of the warranty). So the car is in the shop today for that – and the ransom is well into 4 digits left of the decimal. (CJ, the battery pack is currently running $2400, plus labor and various other bits that have to be handled at the same time.) They’re also dealing with the ball joints, which need new boots – another age-related problem.
ouch!
Folks, I had a long reply written out, self-analytical to a fault, personal history, side commentary, you name it. Fortunately, I realized I was writing an epistle instead of a reply, and stopped it.
Basically, I’ve realized from my earlier reply — I am still hurting, from a very basic, unfulfilled need, the need for love, for emotional and physical affection, romance and sex too. I’ve had that need lifelong, and it’s gone unmet with only a couple of brief exceptions and some fumbling around, bittersweet and tragic-comedic in my teens, and one important friendship that turned out not to be what I had thought, as an adult, which made me question my feelings and my ability to read other people.
I’m still somehow blocked, and yet I think that’s partly pigmentary, if I could only get a positive enough time with a friend / boyfriend to work that out. It’s likely that it needs effort over time, maybe several relationships, to outgrow and unlearn that. Or maybe I’d be OK with one good relationship.
But at present, I am still stuck and trying to get other areas of my life going well again. I just wish this one vital part of my life, my love life, could work itself out.
I will Neve know what my life might have been like if I had somehow come out in collie or earlier; if some friend had managed to get through to me or I’d managed to reach out to some friend successfully, instead of missteps or not trying. I don’t know what would have reached me at some points.
I wish also I had known to talk with family friends back then, to move out and get support from them and insist my parents let go — and pay me and let me managed it, instead of putting it in an account towards college. I later found out my argument for this was not only morally right, but they were not legally supposed to do that, since I was over 18, despite my handicap and despite that yes, I was depressed and having such trouble in college. (If I could have come out, likely that would have solved itself. That was the main cause.) — I was not going out on wild parties or drinking or doing drugs (or having any sex, darn it) or overspending. I was, in fact, being very frugal and careful. — And oh, I was naive and unprepared. But mostly, I was struggling with being gay in a world where that was hardly ever accepted, and not by my parents, as far as I knew.
The kicker? Even if everything had worked out the best it could, or all of those early college freshman dreams had come true — I would still have had to deal with it when my parents passed away, when my grandmother’s health went into decline, and when she passed away and since then. Even if, by some chance, my parents had both lived to the present day, they would now be in their late 80’s and I’d be taking care of them. One way or the other, I would have ended up in approximately where I am now, though maybe a bit better off financially (or not) and maybe I would’ve come out sooner and had better success at that (or not).
here I am, and I am still stuck in that one part of my life, my love life, with that need still unfulfilled, still somehow blocked, and way too isolated in general.
I am hoping that I’ll get to move into a rent house, out of the apartment, and so a few things can be a little more easy to work on and build upon, to get my life back to where it’s in better shape. — At 53. Heh.
The “kids” of family friends whom I have not seen since my parents passed away, because we fell out of contact while I was grieving — turned 35 last month. They were born the year I graduated high school. I am old enough o be a dad or. a grandpa. I’m gay, handicapped, single, and feel like I’ve been alone so long I might be too likely to latch onto a friend by mistake, thinking it’s more than it is. And yet I need those good relationships, best friends, one or more roommates, a boyfriend or partner / spouse. Hah, when I haven’t had any of those in years, and about the boyfriend, never have had.
So, phooey, I’m getting by, still, somehow. But I just spent way too long writing one reply, deleting it before postitng, and then this one.
On the other hand, I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working on two font-faces. I’m stubborn, at least.
I get to call one of those friends tomorrow to remind him he’d promised we’d check the two rent houses. Hopefully that can happen this week. — Ooh, there are times I wish I could see fine and could drive myself. That, however, is something that cannot happen, barring one (or several) breakthroughs in biology and prosthetic implants. It isn’t likely to happen in my lifetime.
I am muddling through somehow. Just danged frustrated at life and at myself and how things are. Wishing for better and wishing I could get past my own weird quirks and one blockage. … Working with what I’ve got, which is me.
Goober has become very vocal now that he’s a solo kitty. He is getting more food this way, and more attention. I still miss Smokey and still feel like a fool, and caught myself yesterday including him when saying I’d feed Goober. — By now, Smokey must have a new home, surely. I hope he’s OK and it will work out better for him. I could still kick myself. But I guess I needed to learn that lesson. It’s not an easy one. He is likely better off with a new family. I hope. But I do wish I hadn’t reacted so badly and I wish somehow I could’ve found a way to get him to change his misbehavior.
Life is so strange. But I am still around, still figuring out how to live this life. I hope I’m learning better.
M’dear, I was reared to believe that males were always smarter, wiser and emotionally as well as physically stronger than females. Also that a woman owed perfect trust faith and obedience to her husband. A woman should ideally have only one sexual partner in her life, the exception being if she were widowed early. The only reason for divorce was the unfaithfulness of the wife, so it was always a major shame for the woman.
I and my first husband were 18. That’s a great deal of power to give an 18 year old man/boy. Need I say more of mistaken upbringings and how difficult it is to get over them?
Tommie, I’ve seen varieties of that from my grandparents’ and parents’ generations, various relatives, family friends, and friends, with everything from, yes, that narrow a definition of men’s and women’s roles, to a much more relaxed, yet still fairly traditional approach, both from a religious standpoint and a more secular one.
I think my paternal grandma and my maternal grandmother were fortunate to have escaped some of that, or to have outgrown it by changing themselves.
My dad’s parents raised their kids to be fairly equal-minded about men’s and women’s roles in life, despite that my grandpa was quite older than my grandma. They counted a long time, both families and the town approved of it, and the age difference wasn’t so uncommon in their generation; but it would be unusual or scandalous today. So it’s surprising how well they raised the brothers and sisters _not_ to be so negative towards women and men.
My grandmother came from a very poor, very fundamentalist family, but my great-grandfather (my mom called both sets of her grandparents “mamaw and papaw”) was kind-hearted, although with a strong disciplinarian streak. Somehow, my grandmother grew up well with that. She and my biological granddaddy eloped when she was 17 and he was 17 or 18. Heh. They had a mostly good marriage, but he had an affair and left my grandmother when my mom was 15, in high school, and he divorced my grandmother. — This and her later remarriage to the granddad I knew, which was rockier early on, were a big reason why my grandmother became such a fiercely independent lady, though I think she was always of that temperament. My mom was also. So from my mom and grandmother, I had two strong-minded women who stuck up for themselves, and yet were loving and more-or-less traditional. (My grandmother was this very unusual combination of the traditional homemaker and yet the modern woman who had worked outside the home all her adult life, had some very liberal / feminist ideas, did yoga for years, and yet made this mesh seamlessly with her more traditional or conservative ideas. (She could never bring herself to wear a pantsuit or slacks or jeans to church, but did wear them otherwise, a personal quirk, haha.)
I grew up with a mom who had always worked, had put herself through college, and a dad who didn’t want a doormat, wanted a challenge, and the two of them were best friends as well as in love. They managed to be faithful to each other lifelong. (I would have been happy if my dad had remarried after my mom died, but in those two years, he didn’t.)
But — I’ve seen the kinds of things you were talking about in action. I don’t know how women _or_ men can live with that strict and narrow a definition of their roles in life, and yet so many do.
You are lucky to have managed to outgrow and change past that.
I am still trying to get past parts of my upbringing with regards to being gay. In some ways, I think I’ve gotten better, and in others, I still seem to be lagging behind. Or maybe it’s just lack of enough positive experience, and it would undo itself with the right chances.
I found myself thinking just now. — My mom had a good liberal arts English major from Rice in the 1950’s. She was born in the Great Depression and a young teen during World War II. She grew up in the city, but my granddad liked to hunt and fish, and both sets of grandparents were from the country. My dad grew up a farm boy between Virginia and Texas. (Grandpa had “itchy feet.” If he’d been born 200 or so years later, I’d bet he’d try for space colonies.)
So my mom had to have been exposed to all sorts of other ideas, including that there were gay people. She had to have known that some of the artists, actors, musicians, writers that she liked were gay. I’m pretty sure that she had also read all the science fiction books I read; she was a fan. (My dad loved to read and loved history too. So I grew up happily loving science fiction.) As an adult, she surely would have picked up on things I didn’t as a kid and teen.
So somewhere in there, at least for her, had to be some measure of tolerance or “agreeing to disagree and defending that right” about such things. Or else she chose to like what she liked and ignore the points she didn’t like or disagreed with.
So…. Well, I still don’t really know if she would have been OK with that part of me. I suppose like most people, they may not be sure and don’t want to make the wrong assumptions. But I don’t see how they couldn’t have picked up on this aspect of me. Too close, too familiar with who I was? Or, as I now think, they didn’t want (or know how to) face it, and so chose not to see it or talk about it with me? Dunno.
I was also very stubbornly private and trying to deal with it (or not deal with it, by turns). — So it could well be that my refusal to open up or talk to them contributed to them not talking to me about it. — It was a non-starter subject. I didn’t so much hear outright aggressive hellfire-and-brimstone from them on it, as it was just a negative and unspoken or maybe unthinkable. (I grew up with family Bible readings at night as a kid, mostly the King James Version. My parents were both elders/deacons throughout my life. Religious faith was deep down, heart-felt, part of daily life. Which is a good thing except when it’s not.) So in other words, I grew up with various translations, all admonishing anything between people of the same sex/gender was a sin. It wouldn’t be until I was an adult and had access to anything else that brought up real discussion that there could be, and were, other schools of thought in both Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths. (And I was brought up to respect those other faiths: the church where my parents met had borrowed facilities from, amazingly, the local Jewish synagogue while the church was being built. This meant they had many discussions across the two faiths, to compare. And my folks were from the generation who had seen the results of WWII via newsreels and live reports.)
I grew up with a mostly moderate faith background, and fairly typical, I think.
I just wish somehow I could have known more directy or we could have had some meeting of the minds. That and the overly controlling aspects from my parents were the two things that we were really different about. (And I see too how that colored who I am, personality-wise.)
My mom really loved CJ’s books, among many other SF writers. She also loved (and insisted I read) Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series. I am not sure how much of that was meant to be educational as to the sexual and relationship aspect, versus equal rights for women, but she had to have known I wasn’t misogynist and like independent-minded women, given how I was raised.
So I am puzzled and was reminded of it, given reading CJ’s books and the overall discussion.
I would like to think my folks would have found a way to live and let live, to agree to disagree, even if they hadn’t been able to accept it. Maybe it wasn’t the issue for them I thought it was. I just don’t know. But obviously, it’s a real area that still bothers me.
Hopefully Jane is doing better as the days progress, and it’s good you have access to a medical system that functions smoothly, and preferably doesn’t give you any horrific bills. I hate seeing the doctor, giving them a copay, then finding a month later that the copay was insufficient and I need to send a check for more. Who sets up these payment schedules — Mr. Bean?
If Mr Bean set them up they’d cost pennies a piece.
Hence the need for a later charge — grr!
Is it still on the early side to ask after Jane? On the other hand, ought I to just shut my mouth uhm, keyboard and possess myself of silence, since we’ll be told what you all want us to know when you want us to know it?