Fifty years should be celebrated. I have outlasted Nixon, the Edsel, the Cold War, and insanity. Okay maybe not so much the insanity. I now will call it, second childhood.

Ah the season of lies, half-truths, spin, and ambiguousness has begun in earnest.  All that stuff before...just warm up.  The economy is in trouble.  McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound.  Well of course it is fundamentally sound.  We have one.  It works.  It is, however, really sick at the moment and to not recognize that in speeches is blatantly stupid.  People don't trust fundamentally anything for the most part.  Fundamentalists seem scary.  And when you see others losing their jobs at a rate unseen in a while, well they also seem really stupid and uncaring.

However, you cannot make promises on things you are limited in knowledge about.  Hope is a good word, it just should not be the only word.  Change is a sorta good word.  But change is ambiguous.  Every new elected person brings change.  Even if the principles and ideals are the same, they approach the problems differently or have different priorities.  Anything beyond the current administration has to be better and that change will be good.  And for most Americans, especially those running for public office, most especially those for national office, the principles of freedom, democracy (or what stands for democracy today), and all those other platitudes that started out well with our ancestors, but now seem to be mere rhetoric...are all the same. 

The problems are so many and so varied.  We are in wars we need to be fighting and ones we need to let go and step back from.  We are protecting some and not protecting others.  We are moving forward and falling behind.  We are losing out on issues that are being controlled by countries that previously would be afraid to question our choices.  We cannot settle trade issues with emerging economies, let alone the permanently ongoing questions with the Israelis.  Suddenly the compassionate bully has become one of the crowd. 

In the upcoming season, I am voting for the person who can keep radicalism to a minimum, make statements with supporting information, plans with actually comprehendable points, and the guy who is least likely to make me throw up when I click that pen/pin/button/lever.  And on the election day if I can't do that, I may just vote for me.  At least I think I know what I want to do.

Posted by: ginnygk at 15:15 | link | comments (1)

A few months ago, my doctor sent me on a quest to find the information I needed to feel better.  Menopause was literally making me lose my mind.  I felt bad, could not get motivated, hated everyone and everything.  Now those things are not completely unlike how I have felt for years, but then something happened that was just unacceptable.  I lost my brain.  I could not not find things in front of my face, lost the motivation to think about what needs to be done, and would forget from moment to moment what I was doing, while doing it.

I took his advice and began to read about bioidentical hormones (human identical).  Not synthetics like Prempro or Premarin and not the stuff you buy in the health food store.  Real pharmaceutical (supplied by a drug company though you would never know it by the way they all act) hormones like our bodies generally made back when they were young, healthy, functioning.  So I read and read, the good, the bad, the reality, the made up stuff.  Drug companies, by the way, do not like BHRT because it cannot be patented.  They can't make billions on it.  Oh darn. 

I did the homework.  I don't take the estrogen, estradiol, because, 1) don't really need estrogen (it was fine if not too high without the others), 2) estradiol taken by mouth is not good for the liver and by pill make have some relation to the growth though not the cause of breast cancer, 3) there are other estrogens that are not harmful, estriol is one.  It is the weakest of the estrogens and yet does the same work without the harm.  I do take progesterone and testosterone and I am about to take the T3 and T4 for thyroid.  Another lesson learned there.

Thyroid medicines, those we know are put out by drug companies, Synthyroid is the main one, are only one of the two thyroid hormones.  You need both.  Armourthyroid is actually a combination, though not really good with supplying the T3.  My sister has been on Synthyroid since the partial loss of her thyroid to surgery decades ago.  She is overweight, tired, and always looking for sleep.  They have never regulated her meds to help her.  She is a candidate for this type of therapy. But they don't put people on hormones...problem with that statement is that twice they have given her scripts for insulin.  They want to "try" it to help her thyroid.  Two problems, again.  One is the pancreas is where insulin is used, not the thyroid.  The second is, insulin IS A HORMONE.  It is not medication, it is not a drug.  It's delivery system is drug regulated.  It can be synthesized as the other hormones are. 

I don't use the pills of any up to this point, though the thyroid will be possibly in pill form.  I use the cream or gel delivery.  It is easy.  And the good news is I feel better.  I feel like my brain is back, at least in part.  Incredibly, in just a few weeks I am better.  I have a long way to go, but the goal is to feel like I did before the whole menopause process started.  Way, way, way back.  And the cost is not much...because the drug companies do not control the prices.  Yeah.  The cost is less than half what my depression meds were costing.  I am moving off those and off the blood pressure.  My heart is better in this short time.  My hair has stopped thinning and my skin is not dry and thin.  Men can use it too.  They suggest the testosterone which is necessary for bone health and brain function.  Feel better.

I am stepping up to the next level. 

Posted by: ginnygk at 19:09 | link | comments (4)

We all raise our children to be what we hope is good, loving, valuable members of society.  I say all, and I know there are some that this probably does not fit, but for nearly all we want the lives of our children to be better than our own.  It is just that we can guess, hope, observe, and pray we have done our best.  We see their mistakes and take the blame for not getting that lesson exactly right in their upbringing.  We seldom get a defining moment where we are sure we did a good job.  Sometimes we never get that moment. Sometimes we have to make do, transforming a good thing into the defining moment.  I was fortunate to actually have the defining moment after years of search for what has been a blind, often disheartening quest to know that something I tried to teach the boys actually was learned.  It came today and it brought me to my knees.  And it came from two different sons in two different ways. For a woman who never had a child of my own, this is earth shattering. 

The first was from stepson to me.  With all the jealousy we know he feels for adopted son, he still called to day as soon as he heard from his brother.  It was the first time in weeks we have heard from him and we have been frantic with worry and fear.  Justin knows this; he has been concerned as well.  But he did not text his brother back immediately, he called me first.  He wanted me to know that Jon was okay, the legal issues were over, that life was now moving on as we planned months ago.  He was worried about us.  He doesn't often show he even knows we have problems or concerns.  At least I know he is paying attention and he is finally facing that it is not "all about him."  Till next week at least.

The second and most profound is a little more involved.  Jon was involved in an altercation with a man high on substantial drugs and too much alcohol.  Though he did his best to avoid the situation, the man did not and finally Jon was forced to defend himself.  (Without too much detail, this was referred to court and of the more than 3 dozen people who were present at the time of the fight, nearly two thirds showed up in court to support and testify for Jon.  Some of these people, he had never met.)  In the course of the fight, the other man refused to stop and kept attacking and finally Jon gained the upper hand and the fight was over.  But the man then passed out and was hospitalized in a coma.  He died a week later. 

But the important part to me, besides knowing he is okay and he did not intentionally beat a man to death of course, was what happened when he got to court.  He apologized to the other man's family for the fight.  Not because he had to, but because he felt they needed that.  They needed to know he was sorry and was not gloating or taking pride in winning a fight with a man beyond his limit.  More importantly, he gave them enough money for a good funeral, because he felt it was his place to do so.  The fight was not his fault and in all likelihood the man died from years of fighting and drugs and drinking (his arrest record was 24 pages long).  But as a person who believes in right and fairness, he did not feel the family, who could not afford to bury the man, should have to pay for the consequences of an event that eventually ended his life, and Jon did have a part in that event.  He will have to live with this the rest of his life, but at that moment, in a court of law, he told the judge he felt it was his obligation to the family. 

Morality and ethical behavior are subjective at best.  Concern for others is as well.  I believe in the Golden Rule and doing unto others fairly and as I want to be treated.  In the worst possible event of his life, facing a problem of possible punishment for a death that could be attributed to his own hand, a child I raised was more concerned for others than for himself.  He applied that concern in one of the most giving ways, supplying a comfort to a family long burdened by hurt and despair.  He could have used the money in so many other ways.  He received that money because of an auto accident that nearly killed him.  He learned a lesson I hoped to pass on. 

I may not be the best mother, but in this case, I did good.

Posted by: ginnygk at 04:00 | link | comments (1)