I am trying to adjust to an empty nest and a NEW nest.  After ten years of managing a step-kid with Asperger's and bipolar and other issues, the young man has gone to live with his bio-dad.  Is this the best thing for the kid?  Not likely, since bio-dad is a wife-beating, kid-punching mess wrapped in a cloak of fundamentalist Christian-college-dean ( Read more... )

So after many doctor appointments and enough blood drawing to feed everyone in those "Twilight" movies, it seems I have Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  This is good news because it is good to know what is wrong with me.  It's bad because there is no cure, you just live with it.  It's good news because I can stop telling myself I am ( Read more... )

After my last post blaming everything on my ancient hormones I feel almost guilty now because they were innocent bystanders.    It was actually a stroke.  Yes, seriously, I had a stroke ( Read more... )

As almost anyone female and close to my age knows, hormones are the supreme guerrilla fighting force of the human body.  When it is time for them to go, they do not go quietly, they lurk and suddenly surge forward and attack,, then melt back into quiet, and then lob bombs at you.  And my hormones?  Well, they are crazy-eyed, wild-haired molotov- ( Read more... )

I know a book is really pretty good if I find myself interrupting my partner Tam's reading to read her something from the book I am reading. Yes, it is annoying, I know, but she puts up with me because I am fun. Anyway, "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness has had me bugging my spouse quite a lot.

It isn't a perfect book . . .it is a ( Read more... )

The NYTs has gotten really, really stupid.  You know, I started to major in journalism long ago but I decided that it was really a lot of work -- all that research and impartiality and such --  for not much reward. I decided making up shit in my own head was more fun and more the sort of research I like:  research as a jumping off point rather than ( Read more... )

I was thinking about the opposite of autism today and I looked at some internet talk about it.  Most of what I looked at were comments made by people with autism.   Many of them said that anti-autistic people would be outgoing and social butterflies, among other things.  Social butterflies?  Not really.  A lot of autistic folks are not shy and in ( Read more... )

Today I saw a rant from a waitress in New Jersey about how government workers get huge pensions at her expense and how they should not get pensions because she does not get a pension ( Read more... )

But March will be better.  Even though we get snow in Minnesota in March, it is a desperate snow,   It can be a blizzard but it is an angry last gasp of winter.  You can feel it.  The temperature and weather doesn't matter, you can feel the change ( Read more... )

I am up until 2 AM on the day after V-day but I have not yet opened my chocolates.  I am a very good girl.