Heading home from Trader Joe's, purpleglitter spotted a snapping turtle in the opposite lane, cars zooming around it. She attempted to pull over immediately, however an ambulance behind us boomed its horn when she attempted to slow down and there really wasn't a curb at that point to pull onto. The ambulance had neither its sirens nor its flashing lights on and appeared content to travel along with the normal flow of traffic.
About 150 feet away, there was a good bit of curb and purpleglitter pulled onto it. I ran over to see if the turtle was still okay. I was glad to see that someone had stopped in front of it, blocking traffic in that direction. She had attempted to move the turtle, but it had lunged at her and she backed off. The turtle was quite large and quite angry, it definitely didn't want to be messed with. I stood behind it while the other person stood in front to keep it distracted. I grabbed the turtle by its sides and picked it up. That really pissed it off. It flailed its short legs and lunged its head at me, attempted to reach my hands with its formidable beak.
There was a small lake across the road, which I assume is where it came from as it had clearly recently been in water. I crossed over the guard rail and walked down the incline to the lake. I didn't want to simply set the turtle down, because I was worried it would use the opportunity to exact revenge on me. So, I squatted down by the edge of the lake and gently threw the turtle in. Even though the drop was a short one, I waited to see it swim off before I climbed back to the road.
I had left my purse with person who had blocked traffic, and upon retrieving it I headed back toward purpleglitter's car. purpleglitter was walking towards me already and we met halfway, smiled, and went home.
I walked around Arlington and Cambridge yesterday without a cane. i'm experimenting to see if I can (at least temporarily) leave them at home. I don't like having to carry one. I almost fell down at a couple points, but I didn't. While not completely inactive, my vertigo issues seem to be at a relatively inactive point. I know that I'll probably need to take a cane with me again in the future — but if I'm not going to be falling every day, I don't need to bring my cane with me every day, eh? I can take the occasional tumble, especially since I'm wearing thick fake fur coats with padding to dampen any falls that do happen.
Yesterday morning, purpleglitter and I got up early to pick up the two cutest English budgies. The rusty cage they were in sucked and there were two cats there were being allowed batting at their tail feathers, but the had each other and to their former owner's credit, they had insisted they not be separated in their craigslist ad. They are so obviously bonded, they are snuggled up against each other more often then they are not. We are calling them Statler and Waldorf.
Statler and Waldorf home safe and sound, I had to head out to my endocrinology appointment, which went well. It is obvious that my endocrinologist is still not entirely comfortable with me being off psychiatric medication and not in therapy, even though it has been years and I'm doing fine. At least at this point she no longer suggests I go back to either. She did, however, suggest I see my primary care provider. I won't, I don't trust my pcp anymore. However, my endo let slip the name of a primary care doctor popular who is popular with her trannie patients that I'm going to check out switching to.
-----
After they got done taking my blood, I went over to see Ila. She has been teaching me Telugu script, though the words we've been going over have been Sanskrit. This week I need to practice writing conjunct consonants. I think the script is beautiful and am grateful for the opportunity to attempt to learn it. Ila seems to enjoy showing it to me — which is good, otherwise she probably wouldn't.
From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):
Cockroaches — ways to destroy. — 1. The disagreeable odor which the cockroach emits, and which soon permeates all places that it inhabits, proceeds from a dark colored fluid which it discharges from the mouth. The cockroach loves warmth and moisture, hence its populousness in kitchens where fire and water are almost ever present. It is a night prowler, and swarms out from its secret lairs on the departure of daylight. For the destruction of the cockroach we recommend a mixture containing a tablespoonful of red lead, the same amount of indian meal, with molasses enough to make a thick batter. Set this on a plate at night in places frequented by the insects and all that eat of it will be poisoned. Another preparation is composed of one teaspoonful of powdered arsenic, with a tablespoonful of mashed potato. Crumble this every night at bed-time where the insects will find it, and it is said to be an effectual poison. Great care should be exercised in the use of such dangerous agents. An innocent method of destroying cockroaches is to place a bowl or basin containing a little molasses on the floor at night. A bit of wood, resting one end on the floor and the other on the edge of the vessel, serves as a bridge to conduct the insects to the sweet deposit. Once in the trap its slippery sides prevent retreat, and thus cockroaches may be caught by the thousands. 2. The following i said to be effectual: these vermin are easily destroyed, simply by cutting up green cucumbers at night, and placing them about where roaches commit depredations. What is cut from the cucumbers in preparing them for the table answers the purpose as well, and three applications will destroy all the roaches in the house. Remove the peelings in the morning and renew them at night. 3. Common red wafers, to be found at any stationers, will answer the purpose. The cockroaches eat them and die. Also, sprinkle powdered borax plentifully around where "they most do congregate," and renew it occasionally; in a short time not a roach will be seen. This is a safe and most effectual exterminator. 4. Borax is a very good cockroach exterminator. Take some pieces of board, spread them over with molasses, only sufficient to make the borax when sprinkled upon it stick, and place the boards in their haunts. Gum camphor is a speedy remedy to clear the house of cockroaches.
From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):
Lamps — why they explode. — Many things may occur to cause the flame to pass down the wick tube and explode the lamp. 1. A lamp may be standing on a table or mantle, and a slight puff of air from the open window or the sudden opening of a door, cause an explosion. 2. A lamp may be taken quickly from a table or mantle, and instantly explode. 3. A lamp is taken into an entry where there is a draft, or out of doors, and an explosion quickly ensues. 4. A lighted lamp may be taken up a flight of stairs, or is raised quickly to a place on the mantle, resulting in an explosion. In all these cases the mischief is caused by the air movement -- either by suddenly checking the draft, or forcing the air down the chimney against the flame. 5. Blowing down the chimney to extinguish the light is frequently the cause of an explosion. 6. Lamp explosions have been caused by using a chimney broken off the top, or one that has a piece broken out, whereby the draft is rendered variable and the flame unsteady. 7. Sometimes a thoughtless person puts a small-sized wick in a large burner, thus leaving considerable space in the tube along the edges of the wick. 8. An old burner with its air drafts clogged up, which rightfully should be thrown away, is sometimes continued in use, and the final result is an explosion.
From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):
Household Hints. — Do not deposit wood ashes in a wooden vessel or upon a wooden floor. Never use a light in examining a gas-meter. Never take a light into a closet. Never read in bed by candle or lamp light. Never put kindling wood on top of the stove to dry. Never leave clothes near a grate or fire-place to dry. Be careful in making fire with shavings, and never user any kind of oil to kindle a fire. Keep all lights as far from curtains as possible. Always fill and trim your lamps by daylight, and never near a fire. Good nice pie-crust can be made by always observing the following rule. One-quarter of a cup of shortening to every cup of flour used; to be mixed as dry as possible with cold water, and mixed only with a knife. Take sweet butter only for baking purposes, and never fail to thoroughly beat together your butter and sugar, if you would be sure of good results in cake baking. Have metal or earthen vessels for matches, and keep them out of reach of children. Wax matches are not safe. Ground mustard mixing with a little water is an excellent agent for cleansing the hands after handling odorous substances. Cut hot bread or cake with a hot knife, and it will not be clammy. Salt extracts the juices of meat in cooking. Steaks ought therefore not be salted until they have been broiled. In boiling dumplings of any kind, put them in the water one at a time. If they are put in together they will mix with each other. Do not cut lamp-wicks, but trim them by wiping off with a scrap of paper. Never boil vegetables with soup stock, for if you do it will certainly become sour in a short time. Boil your cream for coffee, and see if the coffee will not taste better, as well as keep hot longer. Pin-cushion covers made of cheese cloth embroidered and trimmed with lace, wear well and keep their looks. Some one says that leaves of parsley, eaten with a little vinegar, will destroy the odor of breath tainted by onions. Hot liquid lye is recommended for removing obstructions in waste pipes. Or let the potash dissolve over night in the pipes. To wipe dust from papered walls, take a clean, soft piece of flannel. Of course it must not be damp, but the dry flannel will remove the dust. Varnish the soles of your shoes, and it will render them impervious to dampness, and will also make them last longer. This is a good plan. Clean the mica in stove doors with vinegar. Take clinkers out of stoves by putting a few oyster shells into the grate, when they will become loosened, and may be removed without injuring the lining. Save the droppings from spermaceti candles, tie them in a cloth, and keep to smooth rough flat-irons. Never starch napkins. An old black bunting or cashmere dress may be made to serve a further period of usefulness by being made into a petticoat. Between two evils choose neither. Writing a will does not shorten life, and yet many men fear it will. Save old suspender rings, and sew them on the corners of kitchen holders to hang them by. It will be easy then to flip them on to a nail, and they will not be so likely to get lost. Powdered borax with a little sugar, blown into the cracks and crevices with a small bellows, will drive away house-ants. Have a high stool in the kitchen to sit on when tired, to continue your work if necessary. Perched on its top you can wash dishes or iron with ease. A low stool placed on a wooden chair forms a substitute, but a poor one. A soft sheep-skin mat is restful to stand upon. There is nothing better for cleaning brass or copper than coal ashes. They are also good to scour knives and forks with. For tin, whiting or fine sand is best. To cleanse jars or jugs or any earthen vessel slaked lime is good, or warmed lye. To keep a stove smooth, take a coarse and pretty large piece of flannel, roll it hard, and dip it in fine sand. Proceed to rub your stove whenever you are through cooking. Almost any stove will look better for being done the same way occasionally. Boiled starch is also very good to keep a stove looking well; put it on where it will not burn off — around the back and sides where it doesn't get very hot.
Before I had a livejournal, I wrote something on neitherday.com about school shootings. It was taken down in one of the site redesigns, but seeing as it is relevant to recent events, I thought I'd repost it here:
March 7th, 2001
School shootings, once something totally unheard of, have quickly become a part of the national landscape. Most of these shootings are performed by students who are ostracized and harassed by fellow students.
While I don't believe in violence, as someone who was picked on quite a bit in school, I can see the motivations at work inside these kids. The main difference between now and when I was in high school is that when I was in high school kids who were ostracized had no real way of striking back. Now things are different. Teenagers have now heard of a method (while not one that I endorse) of striking back.
Bullying, ostracization, teasing, vandalism, and even violent acts are committed against students who happen to be different in some way. Now, as when I was in school, there are rules against most of the offenses committed against non-conforming students. But we all know that in most situations school officials turn a blind eye to acts of harassment.
The problem of school shootings will only get worse until these problems are addressed. Unfortunately, most plans that have been adopted only increase ostracization of students that don't fit into the norm. This is equivalent to pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out. For the safety and well-being of all students we need to promote acceptance and tolerance in our schools.
I threw out all of mazzycat's and Paddington's store bought catfood a few days ago, and since then they've been getting tuna for every meal. But a cat cannot live on tuna alone, so today I made them this recipe for chicken dinner with rice and lentils. The reviews are in and it's purr-worthy.
It felt very odd cooking the ground chicken. I've been a vegetarian for over 14 years, and I've not cooked any meat in that time. However, my cats being obligate carnivores must have meat. Perhaps, if there is some sort of regulatory oversight worked out for the pet food industry that will insure that we don't have a massive contamination and recall like the one that is still being expanded, I might someday switch back to the store bought stuff. But for now, it's home cook'n for my kitties.
An industrial chemical that led to a nationwide recall of more than 100 brands of cat and dog foods has been found to contaminate a second pet food ingredient, expanding the recall further.
The chemical, melamine, is believed to have contaminated rice protein concentrate used to make a variety of Natural Balance Pet Foods products for both dogs and cats, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. Previously, the chemical was found to contaminate another ingredient, wheat gluten, used by at least six other pet food and treat manufacturers.
Natural Balance said it was recalling all its Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, its Venison and Brown Rice dog treats and its Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.
The Pacoima, Calif., company said recent laboratory tests showed the products contain melamine. It believes the source of the contaminant was rice protein concentrate, which the company recently added to the dry venison formulas. Natural Balance does not use wheat gluten, which was associated with the previous melamine contamination, it said.
It never seems to end. As purpleglitter said to me in response to this most recent expansion: a lot of this stuff may have contaminating the food all along, they're only finding it now because of the closer scrutiny the media attention has brought.
Gun ownership is akin to being sex offender? That's the assertion of Christian Trejbal and is the attempted justification for the printing of the names and home addresses of concealed carry permit holders, including police officers and VICTIMS of domestic violence, in the Roanoke Times . The CNN piece exposing the fallout from the Roanoke Times article features a domestic violence victim now has her name and address listed publicly while her ex-husband who almost killed her won't have his information listed publicly when he gets out of prison. Who's lives are being put in danger here?
As to the assertions that public records should be public information, following that logic wouldn't the databases of holders of driver's licences need to be made public? Cars are potentially dangerous weapons, and I would like to know which of my neighbors might be driving one. That actually may not be too far off, for better or worse we are rapidly heading to a state of near-total information awareness.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders Thursday announced agreement on a bill that allows for convicted sex offenders to be confined after they complete their prison sentences -- a measure that could affect hundreds of inmates and cost the state more than $80 million a year to carry out, officials said.
The still-to-be-introduced legislation -- which must be approved by both houses and signed by the governor -- will create a new system by which mental-health experts would decide at the end of a sexual predator's sentence if an offender is fit to return to the community or should be held in a psychiatric center.
What better place to house violent sex offender than with heavily drugged mentally ill folk who are undoubtedly aware that no pays attention anything they say. Wouldn't a better plan be to actually keep violent sex offenders in prison? They claim these sex offenders are a risk to the public, but apparently putting at risk mental patients (who've often committed no crime) is not a concern because "crazies" aren't people.
Under this new law, in New York you will be drugged and locked up with a mass of outgoing convicted sex offenders if you say the wrong thing to a therapist or psychiatrist. The safest option if you live in the State of New York: never under any circumstance say anything to a therapist or psychiatrist.
I regularly look up at the sun. Directly. I've done so all my life. When I was in elementary school I was not as cautious and would actually stare. I've even directly observed an annular eclipse of the sun. Now, I just look for a few seconds at a time.
I do it simply to keep in touch with Sol, who brings us warmth and light and life. I talk to Sol, I have a relationship with Sol.
I'm not recommending that anyone go out and do this. There is definitely risk involved – Sol is enthralling and invites stares of awe. People do go blind sungazing, it may just be luck that I have not.
My eyesight has degraded over the years, though not too significantly – from 20/15 when I was a teenager to 20/20 now, and at least some of that is attributable to an increase in static (even with frame comparison compensation).
The holocaust did not begin with the Jews or gays or the Roma peoples or even the political dissidents. The holocaust began in the psychiatric institutions. The first gas chambers installed by the Nazis were in the "hospitals". The skills that would in later years be used against other groups were developed in those institutions. It was under the auspices of psychiatry that it began.
The politics of psychiatry are dangerous, and recent history shows the appetite for forced psychiatry has not abated. Mental patients are one of the most vulnerable groups. "Normal" people fear the mad. They feel they need to be protected from us. We need to be controlled. And of course - they always know best for us.
I've heard people who would cringe at the oppression of any other group casually declare "Why would I care about a bunch of crazy people?". When people take the attitude that something needs to be done to "help" the mentally ill, they usually take the NAMI/TAC approach of forced drugging/electroconvulsive therapy/imprisonment. These approaches are not really about helping the mad, only about shutting us up. The website of the NAMI affiliated Treatment Advocacy Center , which purports to be about helping mental patients, instead relies almost entirely on fearmongering — the evil crazy people are coming to kill your cops and throw you under a train. They must be controlled.
In my more optimistic moments I hope that "sane" people figure out that what is now done to us may effect them also. The realm of psychiatry is expanding, more and more of who were once considered "sane" are being given the label "insane". The expansion of who is insane is aimed at anyone who isn't happy and productive and non-questioning of the standard paradigm. No one is "safe" from being redefined, and if you find yourself in mourning for longer than two weeks when you most dear loved one dies, you may be joining the rest of crazies who may have at one time been called human.
Human activity in China's Yangtze river is causing the region's dolphins to go extinct — and more species will follow if fishing is not regulated, conservationists have warned.
Scientists on an expedition in China claimed this week that the freshwater baiji (Lipotes vexillifer), also called the river dolphin, should be declared 'functionally extinct' in the river. This means that even if a tiny handful of individuals still remains, their numbers will not be enough for them to bounce back. The creature does not live anywhere else — making it the first cetacean to be driven to extinction by humans.
"There's no hope to save them," says August Pfluger, chief executive of the Baiji.org foundation, which has just completed a six-week survey of the Yangtze during which they found no baijis.
...
What's more, another Yangtze mammal, the finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), is also heading the same way, Pfluger says. "In the 1980s there were thousands and thousands," he says. "In the 1990s there were around 6,000, according to surveys. Now there are around 400. The population is declining at an alarming speed."
...
The Yangtze basin, which winds for 1,750 kilometres and ends at Shanghai, is the most densely populated place on the planet — around 400 million people live along its banks. "The habitat is so degraded that it's very difficult for large animals to survive," says [Rob] Shore.
In the short term, he suggests that remaining dolphin species and other mammals should be taken from the river and put into lakes to safeguard them until the river can be restored. "It's not an ultimate solution but it might have to be the way forward," he says.
I had a wonderful thanksgiving. In yesterday's post on thanks giving, I wrote about one aspect of thankfulness. However, there are many aspects of thankfulness and there is much I am thankful for. The following is an incomplete list:
I am thankful to have been able to spend a holiday with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece. I am thankful to be able to call them family.
I am thankful for the rest of my family, both found and blood.
I am thankful that I have a home to head to, and that when I get there I will not have to worry about having enough to eat.
I am thankful that I can express my thanks online.
I am thankful that, even if I have problems with it sometimes, I have access to medical care.
I am thankful that I live in a place that I can leave my house anytime day or night and be relatively safe.
I am thankful for the kisses I get from Skye.
I am thankful for Spy Pond.
And, I am thankful that I am not so bitter and jaded that I could not be thankful for the blessing I have received.
While I was sitting on a bench on the shore Spy Pond last week, I found myself looking down from above at Spy Pond and the autumnal trees of Elizabeth Island. Whether this was some sort of spontaneous out of body experience or a product of dissociation combined with vertigo and a high aptitude for spacial transitioning, I do not know.
Regardless of how I got there, it brought my thoughts to the budgies. The budgies get a lot of out-of-cage time. They fly around a lot in Lake's apartment. But it's not the same. The room has a ceiling and walls. The room has limits and I wish I could give them the
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
purpleglitter spotted a snapping turtle in the opposite lane, cars zooming around it. She attempted to pull over immediately, however an ambulance behind us boomed its horn when she attempted to slow down and there really wasn't a curb at that point to pull onto. The ambulance had neither its sirens nor its flashing lights on and appeared content to travel along with the normal flow of traffic.
peaceful
determined
awake
groggy
hot
crappy
angry
full
thankful